The Rudolf Steiner Archive

This winter's lecture series sought to characterize the spiritual movement from various perspectives, which is supposed to be the attempt to lead the human soul through immersion in its own essence to those insights that it must long for with regard to the most important riddles of existence and life. An attempt has been made to show how, in a completely natural way, by considering present or emerging intellectual currents, spiritual science will show itself to be the right instrument for guiding the human soul into the realm of spiritual knowledge in a way that is appropriate to the present and the near future, in accordance with the laws given by the development of the human spirit. At the same time, as an undertone of these winter reflections, we have always tried to let it be heard what achievements and results spiritual life and spiritual striving have brought to humanity in the nineteenth century. For one can truly say that, given the way in which spiritual striving and spiritual life in the nineteenth century has seized humanity, and how this humanity has brought about the great triumph of material existence, it would seem a hopeless undertaking if this spiritual science, as it is meant here, had to rebel against or reject the justified demands of natural science or, in general, the intellectual results of the nineteenth century.

So it may perhaps be appropriate to end this lecture cycle by taking a look at what we can call the spiritual heritage of the nineteenth century, in order to perhaps be able to point out, by considering this spiritual heritage of the nineteenth century, how natural the spiritual science meant here is for the current development cycle of humanity.

What does this spiritual science of the soul attempt to be? It attempts to be a realization of the soul's origin in the spiritual; it attempts to be a realization of those worlds, those supersensible worlds, to which the soul belongs as a spiritual being, quite apart from the fact that this soul lives within the physical-sensory world through the tools and instruments of its body. It thus attempts to prove this soul to be a citizen of the supersensible worlds. It attempts to show that the soul, when it applies those methods often spoken of here during the course of this winter, can achieve such a development that powers of recognition are awakened in the soul, which otherwise hardly resonate in a person's life like an undertone of this life, but which, when unfolded and developed, really place this soul in the worlds to which it actually belongs with its higher being. When the soul discovers these powers in itself, it comes to recognize itself as an entity for which birth and death, or, let us say, conception and death, represent boundaries in the same sense that the blue firmament of heaven represents boundaries for the soul that recognizes in the spirit of natural science since the dawn of modern natural science, roughly since the work of Giordano Bruno and those who were like-minded to him. As the soul becomes aware of the forces slumbering within her, something similar happens in her for the temporal-spiritual as it did for the outer knowledge of the spatial-material in the time of the dawn of modern science, when, for example, For example, Giordano Bruno pointed out that this blue vault of heaven, which for centuries and centuries was thought to be a reality, is nothing more than a boundary that human knowledge sets for itself through a kind of inability and which it can transcend if it understands itself.

Just as Giordano Bruno showed that behind this blue vault of heaven lies the infinite sea of space with the infinite worlds embedded in it, so spiritual science has to show that the boundary set by birth and death or by conception and death only exists because the human soul's capacity is limited in time just as it once limited itself through the blue vault of heaven in space, but that when infinity can be extended beyond birth and death to the conception of the spiritual facts in which the soul is interwoven, the soul recognizes itself as permeating through repeated earthly lives. So that the soul's life on the one hand flows in the existence between birth and death, on the other hand in the time from death to a new birth.

If we go out with our view into the temporal-spiritual expanses, as science has gone out into spatial expanses, then the human soul recognizes itself by stepping out of the life it has gone through between death and the last birth, into the life between birth and death, both as co-creator of the finer organization of its own body and as creator of its own destiny. Furthermore, it has been said – this has perhaps been less touched upon this winter, but it has been in previous years and can be read about in spiritual-scientific literature – that the soul, when it grasps itself in its deeper powers, also traces itself back to the times when life in physical forms of existence began; that it can trace itself back to those times when it was already there before our earth planet took on its material form, before the earth as a material form itself emerged from a purely spiritual primal being, in which the human soul was already present in its first form, even before the emergence of the natural kingdoms surrounding us, the animal, plant and mineral kingdoms. And again the prospect opens up of a future into which the human soul has to enter when the earthly embodiments have been fulfilled, into which it will then pass into a purely spiritual world that will replace the earth; so that one can look can look forward to a future in which the human soul will enter, will enter purely spiritually, so that it will have to bring the fruits of earthly life forms to what it will achieve again as a spiritual kingdom, as in a primeval state. But it will not achieve it in the same form as it started out, but with the result of everything that can be acquired in earthly embodiments.

When the soul takes hold of itself in such a way that it condenses with the forces slumbering within it, then it also recognizes itself in connection with worlds that are the source worlds themselves opposite our earth planet; it recognizes itself as a citizen of the entire universe. From the successive earth-lives of the individual soul, spiritual science can take the upward surge to the successive lives of the planets, and even of the suns in the universe. The method is therefore one that consists in the soul's self-education to its deepest powers. The result is the realization of the origin and direction of the soul's life, the realization that the first is spirit, to which the soul belongs, that it is spirit that lets matter emerge from itself and brings it into its forms, and the most important form, which interests us most in our earthly existence, is the form of the human body. This realization will therefore have to become part of the consciousness of humanity in the near future: that spirit is the first and the highest, that spirit releases matter out of itself, just as water gives rise to ice out of itself, that spirit is what gives its outer form to the human body, that spirit with the spiritual activities, facts and entities of the world, and that the human soul is a citizen of this world of spiritual facts and entities, which release all external material existence from themselves, pouring it into the corresponding forms that then make up the visible universe around us, which can be perceived by the senses. This is how I would briefly characterize what can be the method and what the result of what is called spiritual science here.

This spiritual science is only just beginning in our present time. It has often been emphasized that it must seem quite understandable that enemies and opponents of this spiritual science are still rising from all sides today. This must seem understandable, especially to those who stand on the ground of this spiritual science themselves and, so to speak, know its whole character in relation to the rest of the cultural life of the present day. It is not surprising that this spiritual science finds enemies and opponents, that it is seen as fantasy, as reverie, perhaps sometimes as something even worse. It would be more surprising if, given the nature of this spiritual science, there were already more voices of recognition and encouragement in the present than is the case. For it seems very much as if not only the results of this spiritual science, but also the whole way of thinking and imagining, as it had to be practiced here, contradicts all habits of thought and all modes of imagination that have arisen for humanity precisely through the legacy of the nineteenth century. But it only seems so. And it may be said that this appears most to those who believe that they must stand on the firm ground of this heritage of the nineteenth century, that they consider only a materialistic way or a materialistically colored way of looking at the world to be compatible with this heritage of the nineteenth century.

What the spiritual scientist himself must recognize as this spiritual science does not seem to contradict the legacy of the nineteenth century at all.

At the turn of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the great philosopher of the West, Johann Gottlieb Fichte, was writing his famous work “The Destiny of Man,” which is a testament to the hope for what the human soul can achieve inwardly and what it can become when it becomes aware of its powers and uses them. If you follow how he expressed himself to his most intimate friends and close associates while working on this writing, it is that he was able to glimpse into the deepest secrets of human cognitive and religious feeling. When one then goes through this writing, one can be fascinated by a kind of self-testimony, which in this writing the human soul seeks for the sake of its security, for the sake of its hope. In the first chapter, Fichte assumes that the knowledge gained through the external observation of nature and the physical world is basically only an external appearance, hardly that which one could seriously call a dream. how the soul takes hold of itself, takes hold of itself in its will, how it becomes certain of its own existence, then one gets an impression, which can be characterized something like this, even more through the individual explanations of this writing than through the whole context in which it is placed. This human soul has tried to pose the question: Can I stand before myself if I have no trust in all the knowledge that presents itself to me through my senses, and even through the contemplation of the external intellect? — In the style of his time, Fichte answered this question affirmatively in a grandiose way. What is impressive about this writing is precisely what it can become for the soul through the nature of the language, through the inwardly secure tone, which is so secure despite the renunciation of outwardly apparent knowledge.

Now, this writing is right in the middle of a striving of Western intellectual life for the sources of human confidence and human knowledge. The period in which Fichte aspired to such a powerful way of grasping the human soul was followed, so to speak, by the heyday of philosophical endeavor. What Fichte himself tried, what Schelling, Hegel and Schopenhauer tried, what was attempted in the field of philosophy in the first third of the nineteenth century to penetrate the secrets of the world with the power of human thinking , all this worked – however one may feel today about the results of this intellectual upsurge – through the way one felt in this striving, how one willed, grandiosely on every feeling and sensing human soul.

If you let yourself be influenced by Schelling, you might say, you would gain from an understanding of the world that is made secure by intellect but then becomes more imaginative. It is a world view that could really carry him beyond all material things into the spiritual evolution of the world. If you then move on to Hegel's striving of thought, which to penetrate into the innermost being of things through the power of thought alone, so that Hegel wanted to make clear to the human soul that in the power of thought it has the sources into which all the powers of the world flow and in which one has everything to grasp oneself, so to speak, in the eternal — then one sees a powerful struggle of humanity. One need only consider the hope and confidence that were attached to this powerful struggle.

And again, if one turns back, one might notice something that can somewhat enlighten the deeper observer of this entire epoch, of which we have now briefly spoken, about its origin. Thus, if we look back to the year 1784, we find a small, characteristic essay by Kant entitled “What is Enlightenment?” Its almost pedantic style does not always allow us to see how deeply the sometimes quite intellectual thoughts of this essay are rooted in the whole struggle of the human soul in modern times. “What is Enlightenment?” This question was posed by Kant, the same Kant who was so moved by the often chaotic but nevertheless powerful striving of the human spirit, as it came to light for example in Rousseau, that when he – which is more than an anecdote – could not keep still, but disrupted his entire daily routine and went for a walk at a completely irregular time (Kant, after whose walk one could otherwise set the clock) in Königsberg! But we know how Kant's soul was stirred by the freedom movement of the eighteenth century. This then, when we take this little writing in our hands, comes across to us, one might say, quite monumentally, in the sentences that we read there. Enlightenment, Kant says, is the emergence of the human soul from its self-imposed immaturity. — Dare to use your reason! This sentence is taken from Kant's writing of 1784. One really appreciates this sentence: Dare to use your reason!as well as the others, especially when one realizes that they express something like the human soul coming to itself for the first time in a certain sense. Let us try to see these two Kantian sentences from his essay of 1784 in their true light, using a simple thought.

Cartesius, who as a philosopher did not precede Kant's work by very long — if we consider this “not very long” in terms of world development — went back to a striking and significant sentence. He pointed the human soul to its own thinking and thus did the same again that Augustine had already done in the first Christian centuries. It sounded like a keynote of Descartes's soul life when he said: “I think, therefore I am,” and in saying this he was saying something that Augustine had already said in a similar way: You can doubt the whole world, but by doubting you think, and by thinking you are, and by grasping yourself in thinking you grasp existence in yourself.

A person of sound mind cannot, according to Cartesius, possibly recognize himself as a thinking soul and doubt his existence. I think, therefore I am – this was, despite the fact that Augustine had already formulated a similar sentence, nevertheless something extraordinarily significant for the century of Cartesius and for what followed in the eighteenth century. But if we follow Cartesius as he goes on to build a worldview, looking further from this sentence as a basis, then we see that he takes up everything that has been handed down from centuries of tradition. One sees how his thinking, with what wants to arise from the human soul itself, stops at the traditions brought together from the centuries, at the spiritual truths, at the questions about the fate of the human soul after death and so on. Cartesius stops at the actual spiritual truths.

When you consider that, it becomes clear what it means that the Kantian sentences resounded in the middle of the Age of Enlightenment in the eighteenth century: Enlightenment is the stepping out of the human soul from its self-imposed immaturity, and: Dare to use your reason! That is to say, people have now dared to trust the human soul with the power to reach the sources of its existence, to reach the sources of its strength through its own power, through its own greatness. This is precisely the characterization of Kant's statement, and it is proof of it.

From there everything that is contained in the bold sentences of Fichte's writing started, from there started that bold thought work that stands so grandiosely in the philosophy of the Occident from the first third of the nineteenth century. If we consider this upsurge of the human spirit, which we do not want to consider today in terms of the truth or falsity of its content, but in terms of what the human soul hoped to gain from it in terms of inner confidence and certainty of hope, and if we turn our turns one's gaze further into the mid-nineteenth century, one is perhaps touched by a word of a man like the writer of the history of philosophy, also the independent philosopher, but especially the biographer of Hegel, Karl Rosenkranz. In his preface to his “Life of Hegel” (1844), he writes: “It is not without melancholy that I part from this work, since one would hope that one day there would be a coming to be, not just a coming to be of the becoming! For does it not seem as if we of today are only the gravediggers and monument-makers for the philosophers who gave birth to the second half of the last (eighteenth) century only to die in the first of the present?” From such a statement, one feels perhaps more than from other descriptions how around the middle of the nineteenth century the whole splendor of philosophical endeavor had quickly faded from the turn of the eighteenth to the nineteenth century and from the first third of the nineteenth century.

But another splendor arose immediately. While in the 1830s and 1840s the splendor of philosophical intellectual life quickly faded, a new confidence arose, one might say a new bliss of hope. This had already been prepared by the great scientific overviews of a physiologist like Johannes Müller and by everything that people like Alexander Humboldt and others have done. But then came such significant achievements as the discovery of the cell and its effect in the living organism by Schleiden and Schwann. This marked the beginning of a new era of the splendor of scientific knowledge. And now we see, in what has been done, all that will indeed shine immortal in the evolution of the nineteenth century. We see how the great achievements of physics follow on: in the forties, the discovery of the law of the conservation of energy and of the transformation of heat by Julius Robert Mayer and by Helmholtz. Those who are familiar with contemporary physics know that it was only through this discovery that physics became possible in the modern sense. We see how physics is led from triumph to triumph, how the discovery of spectral analysis by Kirchhoff and Bunsen draws attention away from the material conditions on Earth and towards the material conditions in the heavens, by recognizing how the same substances are revealed in all the conditions in the heavens. We see how physics arrives at combining its theoretical foundations with the practical application of its principles, how it succeeds in penetrating into technology, and how it changes the culture of the Earth planet. We see natural fields such as electricity and magnetism, by connecting them with technology, stand as something great. We see the most highly developed future prospects joining the contemplation of the living, the organic, which was given by Darwin and in its further developments by Haeckel.

We see all this incorporated into the spiritual life of humanity. We see how Lyell's research from the beginning of the nineteenth century is followed by today's geology, which attempts to give a picture of the course of events on earth in a material sense. We see how grandiose attempts are also being made here to integrate the origin of man into the processes of the earth by means of purely material laws, to connect the biological with the geological. But all that has taken the place of the power of thought in the first third of the nineteenth century has not only deeply influenced theoretical worldviews. For if that had been the case, one could say that all this initially took place as if on a kind of upper horizon of intellectual development; but below that is the horizon of the rest of the population, who do not concern themselves with it. No, there is nothing in the development of mankind into which his instincts have not driven, which has now been sketched with a few cursory lines. We see it stretching everywhere into the mysterious formations of this spiritual path of humanity.

The human soul itself, in its innermost being and existence, has by no means remained untouched by what has taken place there. What took place there could be summarized, so to speak, characterizing the legacy that the nineteenth century left us, for example in a soul that was still allowed to listen to what came out of Fichte's mouth, which is contained, for example, in his writing “The Destiny of Man”. Such a soul would have had certain feelings and emotions about its own nature, about the way it can experience itself. This inner structure in relation to the experience of oneself at the beginning of the nineteenth century would present itself quite differently if we consider a soul that, I do not want to say, adheres to a materialistic creed, but which, with open senses and with interest, devotes itself to everything that legitimately flows from the heritage of the nineteenth century. This human soul has not remained untouched in its innermost being by what is unfolding around it in the expansion of the big city centers, has not remained untouched by the cultural achievements that stand as an embodiment of the new spiritual life, that spiritual life that has been gained from the contemplation of the new laws of the mechanical world order. From these views, which, so to speak, prove that the universe and its laws are to be regarded in a similar way to the laws that also govern machines and locomotives, a soul was still free to devote itself wholeheartedly to a work such as Fichte's “The Destiny of Man”. It has been rightly emphasized that this human soul had to undergo its transformation under the influence of all that has necessarily emerged as a material cultural result of the way of thinking, feeling and sensing that was characterized by the way it was transformed in the nineteenth century.

Consider the individual symptoms that have emerged as a result of what nineteenth-century scientific thought has delivered. Think of how the painter in earlier times stood in front of the canvas, how he mixed his colors, how he knew that they would hold; because he knew what he had mixed into them. The nineteenth century, with its great achievements and advances in technology, instructs the painter to buy his colors. He no longer knows what is presented to his senses, he does not know how long the splendor that he creates on the canvas will last, how long the impression will last. Yes, it is only under the influence of technology, which has emerged from the achievements of natural science, that we have today what we have today as public journalism, as our modern newspaper system and everything that makes an impression on the human soul, which, above all, has changed the whole pace of the human soul, and with it the thought forms, the whole influence on the feelings and thus also the structure of the feelings. Not only must we remember how quickly things come to man today through the achievements of modern technology, but we must also point out how quickly what the human mind achieves reaches other human minds through journalism, and what abundance reaches the human mind.

Now compare what a person can learn today through this journalism about what is happening in the world, and also about what the human mind is exploring, with the way he could learn about all the events at the beginning of the nineteenth century. Take a mind like Goethe's! We can look at him precisely because of the careful way in which his correspondence has been preserved, we can almost know what he did from hour to hour, we can know what he talked about and did with this or that scholar. Through this, the achievements of human intellectual life slowly flow together in his lonely Weimar room. But the central figure of Goethe was necessary for this to happen, which anyone can do today through journalism. But that changes the whole human soul, the whole position of the human soul in relation to the environment.

Let's approach something else. Today we write books or read books. Anyone who writes a book today knows that it will no longer be readable after about sixty years if it is printed on the paper that is the result of great technological advances, because it will have disintegrated. So, if you are not under any illusions, you know how much what was done in the past differs from what is available today.

In one lecture of this series, I tried to characterize a mind that, although it is connected to the whole spirit of the first half of the nineteenth century, is nevertheless a mind of the second half of that century: Herman Grimm. We have seen that he presents himself as a custodian of the heritage of the first half of the nineteenth century into the second half. But anyone who reads Herman Grimm's art essays with inner understanding will notice two things, among other things. In his work, even in the most valuable essays, a certain school resonates that he went through, a school that can be heard resonating in every essay. He was only able to undergo this schooling because, relatively early on, by what is called chance, he came into contact with a great mind, that of Emerson, a great preacher and writer who was a preacher and writer of world views not in the sense of older times, but in the most modern sense. Try to visualize Emerson, to immerse yourself in him, and you will find that a nineteenth-century spirit stands before us. Try to feel the pulse of the thoughts that arise with the coloration and nuance of the nineteenth century, even when they refer to Plato the philosopher or Swedenborg the mystic. No matter how unprejudiced they are, they are nineteenth-century thoughts that could only be thought in a century that was destined to make the telegraph the world's means of communication. Emerson, in particular, has a mind that, while rooted in Western culture, elevates this culture of the West to what it has become in the eminent sense. One tries to compare a page by Emerson with a page by Goethe, wherever one might open Goethe. Then try – which, however, you must find natural in the case of Goethe – to compare the image of the leisurely Goethe, still walking in the steps of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth century, with the rapidly hurrying being of the man of the nineteenth century, which continues to have an effect in the train of thought of Herman Grimm. That is one thing.

But then we saw how Herman Grimm, in his wonderful novel of the times, 'Unüberwindliche Mächte' (Insurmountable Forces), even pointed to the existence of the human etheric body or life body, as he pointed to much that has only been fully developed in spiritual science. But one can also see how Herman Grimm deals with everything artistic in a thoroughly personally interesting, outstanding way, how he is able to juxtapose more distant periods of time artistically, how he is able to give an interesting, subtle consideration of art. It is impossible for anyone who is able to see such things to think that the thoughts that form the most beautiful essays of Herman Grimm could have been written in any other age than the one in which it was impossible for Herman Grimm to travel from Berlin to Florence or South Tyrol without being in a hurry. For this is the precondition for the formation of much of his work. Imagine that someone like Herman Grimm could have said in earlier centuries: “I have always written the most important parts of my Homer book in Gries near Bolzano during the weeks of spring, because that is when I feel the effect of spring!” That something like this could be integrated into a person's life is only possible in the overall atmosphere of the nineteenth century. There we feel a confluence of what springs forth as a wonderful contemplation of art in Herman Grimm, what proves to be an immersion into the soul of the entire cultural impact of the nineteenth century, with what emanates from technology, and flowing back into it, from the triumphs of the nineteenth century.

It is impossible to understand some of the deepest things of the nineteenth century if one is unable to summarize them with what is the most important legacy of the nineteenth century: with the scientific ideas with which the nineteenth century tried to understand the world. Today we cannot but admit that something lives in our soul as one of its most important instruments, which would not be there at all without the structure of scientific thinking, as we have it as a legacy of the nineteenth century. That is one side of it, the side that presents itself to us in what this human soul has made of itself after it has undertaken what Kant so monumentally characterized when he said: Enlightenment is the human soul's emergence from its self-imposed immaturity, and: Dare to use your reason! — This tendency of the Enlightenment, that is, the use of the means of research of the human soul, went through the philosophical upsurge and into the age of natural science, just as this human soul happens to be. But how did that happen overall? From the point of view of spiritual science, we have to consider a larger context if we want to understand what has actually been expressed, if we want to understand the configuration, the structure of our soul, in which we see the will to enlightenment on the one hand, and on the other hand everything that scientific culture has given us. To do this, we have to juxtapose at least three successive cultural epochs of human development. These cultural cycles have already been referred to in the context of these lectures, in the sense of the observation that arises from an understanding of human spiritual life, which attempts to fathom how the human soul returns through the ages in successive earthly and from earlier ages to later ones not only carries over its own guilt in order to atone for it in the sense of a great law of fate, but also carries over what it has inwardly experienced in the way of cultural achievements. In the sense of this spiritual knowledge, we initially distinguish three ages. Other ages precede these three. However, there is not enough time today to go into them.

The first age of importance for us is the Egyptian-Chaldean age, which came to an end around the eighth century BC. If we want to characterize it, we can say that during this age the human soul lived in such a way that it still sensed something of its connection with the whole universe, with the whole cosmos. In its destiny on earth, it still felt dependent on the course of the stars and the events of the great universe. This age of earlier millennia is filled with reflections on the dependence of human life on the starry worlds and the great universe, right up to about the eighth century BC. The soul felt wonderfully touched when it delved into ancient Egyptian or ancient Chaldean wisdom, when it saw how everything was geared towards feeling the connection of the soul with the cosmos beyond the narrow human existence. Something that was important for feeling this connection of the soul with the cosmos in this cultural epoch was the appearance, for example, of Sirius. And important with regard to what man did for the culture of the soul, what he utilized for the soul or accomplished for it, was the observation of the laws of the heavens. Man felt that he was born out of the whole universe, felt his connection with the extra-terrestrial as well as with the earthly; he felt, as it were, transferred down out of spiritual worlds into the earthly world. This feeling was a final echo of the ancient clairvoyance from which the human soul originated, and which has been mentioned here several times. This ancient clairvoyance was present in primeval times, and man has lost it in the course of development so that he can observe the world in its present form. At that time, in the Egyptian-Chaldean period, there was still an echo of ancient clairvoyance. Man could still grasp the spiritual connection of soul-spiritual laws in all natural existence and wanted to grasp it. In a certain respect, the human soul was not alone with itself. By feeling itself on earth, it was connected and interwoven with the forces that played into the earth from the universe.

Then came the Greco-Latin period, which we can roughly estimate, in terms of its essential nature and its after-effects, as lasting from the eighth century BC to the thirteenth, fourteenth or fifteenth century AD, because the after-effects of this cultural epoch continue for so long. When we look at this age, especially at its first awakening, we find that the human soul has freed itself in a higher sense from the universe, in its knowledge, in its faith, in its recognition of the forces at work within it. In particular, if we look at the Greeks, we can see that the healthy human being, as he developed in the soul, also felt, as he stood on the earth, connected with his natural bodily being. This is what the Greek soul felt and experienced in the second of the periods under consideration. Today it is actually difficult to characterize what is meant by this. We have tried to bring it closer to our understanding in our reflections on Raphael and Leonardo da Vinci. The Greeks lived quite differently in relation to the spiritual and soul life. This was particularly the case, for example, with the Greek artist. Today, one does not even want to admit what was special about the feelings and perceptions of the Greek soul. That the sculptor, who represented the human form in the true sense, could have before him what we call the model today, that he could shape the human form according to the model, is impossible for the Greeks to imagine. It was not so. The relationship of today's artist to his model would have been unthinkable in Greece. For the Greek knew: My entire body is alive with my soul and spirit. He sensed how the forces of this spiritual-soul life flowed into the formation of the arm, into the formation of the muscles, into the formation of the whole human form. And he knew that just as they flowed into the human form, so he had to express them in his sculptures. In accordance with his inner knowledge of the nature of the body, he knew how to recreate what he himself could feel in the external material. Thus he could say to himself: I am weak, but if I developed my will, I could let it work in the formation of the muscles, in the formation of the arm, and thereby become stronger. — What he experienced in this way he poured into his figures. The contemplation of external forms was not the essential thing for him, but the feeling of being placed in the earth's culture in one's own body and soul and the reproduction of what was experienced in the external world.

But the experience of the whole personality was also in Greek culture. It is quite impossible to think of a Pericles or any other statesman as a modern statesman would be thought of. We see a modern statesman acting on general principles, representing what he thinks and wants. When Pericles in ancient Athens steps before the people and carries out something, it is not because he says to himself: Because I see it, it must be carried out. — That is not the case. But when Pericles steps before the people and asserts what he wants, then it is his personal will. And if it is adhered to, it is because the Greek has the knowledge that Pericles can want the right thing because he feels it as a personality. The Greek is a self-contained nature, he lives himself, thinking in a closed way. He can do this because, unlike the members of the Egyptian-Chaldean period, he no longer feels a connection with the gods and so on. That is only present as an echo. But what he experiences directly is that he feels his physical body connected with the spiritual soul. So that in this way he is already more alone with his soul than the man of the Egyptian-Chaldean time, but he is still connected with all the rest of nature, because his body, his flesh, has given him this connection. One must feel that: The soul in the Greco-Latin period, already more free from the general universe than in the previous period, must still feel connected with all that is in the natural kingdoms around it. For the soul felt connected with what is an extract from these natural kingdoms, the physical-corporeal. This feeling is what must be seen as the characteristic of this Graeco-Latin period, which then included the Mystery of Golgotha.

Now we see the emergence - and we are in the midst of it with our thinking and feeling - of the third period, which we have to consider. How does it differ from the Graeco-Latin period? The human soul is much more alone, because the Greek felt connected to what he was in his body, to nature. Let us place before the Greeks the possibility that they should have looked at the smallest living creatures through a modern microscope, they should have thought of the cell theory. Impossible for the Greek soul! For it would have felt, when it came to these microscopic observations, that it was unnatural and unnatural to devise instruments through which one sees things differently than they present themselves to the natural eye of the body! — The Greeks felt so connected with nature that it would have seemed unnatural to them to see things differently than they present themselves to the eye. And to make the world's things visible through the telescope would have seemed just as unnatural to him. In many respects, the ancient Greek way of thinking resembles the way a personality felt who was inspired by this way of thinking and who made the beautiful statement: What are all the instruments of physics compared to the human eye, which is nevertheless the most wonderful apparatus! That is to say, the Greek view of the world was the most natural one, the one that one gains when one arms the senses with instruments as little as possible and thus sees things differently than when man perceives nature directly, as he is placed in the environment.

Our time is quite different! In our time it was quite natural, and it came more and more to be so through the development of the spirit since the period just characterized, that what one strove for as an objective scientific picture of the world was completely separated from what lives in the human soul. Only in this way could the view arise that the truth about the human organization can only be learned by directing the armed eye at things, by examining living beings with the microscope and applying the telescope to conditions in the sky, by using an instrument that comes to the aid of the inaccuracy of the eye. But if we consider the spirit that is expressed in this, we must say that now man separates what lives in his inner being, what is connected with his ego, from his world picture. The human ego, the human self, is even more lonely and alone than it was in Greek times. If we try to compare the Greek world view with our world view, as given to us by science, we have to say: in practice, too, efforts have been made to make this world view independent of what goes on in the deepest inner soul of man, what lives and weaves and is in the human I. In the ancient Egyptian-Chaldean period, for example, the soul and the world were one for the human being's perception. In Greek times, the human soul and the human body were one, but through the human body, the human being was still connected to his world view. Now, the spiritual-soul has become more and more detached, completely detached from what it considers to be the justified content of the world view. Lonely and closed in on itself is the human soul.

Now let us consider the remarkable polarity that becomes evident to us when we move from the Egyptian-Chaldean period through the Greek-Latin period to our own. What man strives for in our epoch above all else, in contrast to the earlier Greek epoch, is to gain a scientific world picture that is independent of his soul. What also necessarily resulted is to separate the human soul from what it was connected to in earlier times, to place the soul on its own, to push it entirely back into its consciousness. In the Egyptian-Chaldean period, the human soul still directed its spiritual and soulful gaze out into the world and allowed itself to be inspired by what was in the world. Even in Greek times, people still took what suited their conception of the world and incorporated it into art. In more recent times, the conception of the world stands alone, separate from the soul experience of the human being. And yet we must say: in modern times, when the human soul has thrown itself out of the objective world view, where it no longer finds itself in the soul in that which flows mechanically and objectively outside, when it has broken the connection with the external world existence, it still wants to gain within itself the strength for knowledge, as a world view, for its entire being. It would still have been inconceivable to the Greeks if someone had told them: Dare to use your reason! or: Enlightenment is the human soul stepping out of its self-imposed immaturity. - One could speak Socratic words in Greece, but not these words, because the Greek would not have understood them. He would have felt: What do I want through my reason? At most, to gain a picture of the world. But this image of the world lives continually in me, as the world flows into my powers and my soul and spirit. It would be unnatural in the face of what flows into me to use my reason. — And the follower of the Egyptian-Chaldean period would have found the call to use his reason even stranger and even more unnatural. To the sentence: Dare to use your reason! he would have replied: Then I would lose the best intuitions and inspirations that flow to me from the universe. Why should I use only my reason, which would impoverish me in my experience, when I make use of it, compared to what flows into me from the universe?

Thus we see how the human souls that come from earlier epochs always encounter a different age. Thus they are educated, in Lessing's expression: in the Egyptian-Chaldean period, in which the soul feels at one with the world; then in the Greek-Latin period, in which the soul feels at one with its own body, and now the souls are going through the period in which they have to find themselves within themselves because they have taken themselves out of their objective world view.

We find it quite in keeping with this that this age must produce a Fichte with his book “The Destiny of Man”, and that he raises the question: What if this world view were perhaps only an illusion, a deception, only a dream? How then can the I, which now feels impoverished — that is a feeling that comes from the times — come to inner confidence? How can it find itself?

Thus we see Fichte's teaching on the I as a necessary result of the whole evolution. We see how, precisely in the nineteenth century, because of the scientific world view – as in Fichte's time, when the power of thought was still in full bloom – the I wants to create clarity through itself. And the attempts of Schelling and Hegel, following Fichte, can only be characterized by seeing in them the endeavour to gain a connection with the world through thought from the I that has emancipated itself from the world picture. But we see how, in the third of these characterized periods, the natural-scientific world picture gradually takes away, so to speak, from the I as well, by impoverishing it, all echoes with the old world pictures. Such things are usually not sufficiently observed in our time.

If we look back to one of the people who contributed in an eminent way to our scientific world view, to Kepler, who achieved so much that still has an effect on our scientific view, we find a remarkable idea in his “Harmony of the World”. He raises his gaze from the harmony of the world to the whole Earth. But for Kepler this Earth is a giant organism, alive, somewhat like a whale. At least, when he looks for an organism among the living creatures that resembles the earth organism, he finds the whale, and he says: This giant animal, on which we walk, which breathes, does not breathe like man, but in the times determined by the course of the sun, and the rising and falling of the ocean is the sign of the inhaling and exhaling of the earth organism. Kepler finds the human view too limited to comprehend how this process takes place.

When emphasizing Kepler's connection with Giordano Bruno for a one-sided view of the world, one should not forget that Giordano Bruno also repeatedly pointed out that the Earth is a giant organism that breathes in and out with the tides of the ocean. And we do not have to go back very far to find the same idea in more recent times. There is a beautiful saying of Goethe's to Eckermann, where he says, “I imagine the earth as a giant animal that has its inhalation and exhalation process in the rising and descending air and in the ebb and flow of the sea.” That is to say, the view of the earth as presented by today's geology only emerged very gradually, and another view was lost, which we can still feel resonating in Goethe and which still comes across to us very vividly in Kepler and Giordano Bruno. What Kepler, Giordano Bruno, what Goethe thought and felt, men felt quite vividly in those ancient times when the soul felt at one with the world. That this feeling of at-one-ment with the world should have grown dim in the course of time was the natural course of evolution.

If we wish to characterize what is presented here in terms of spiritual science, we arrive at the following description. A more detailed explanation can be found in “Occult Science: An Outline”.

If we look at the human soul, not in the chaotic way that modern science often does, but with the eye of spiritual science, we see that it is divided into three parts. First, there is the lowest part of the human soul, which, as one might say, still characterizes in many respects only the whole chaotic depth of the human soul, where the upper parts of human nature do not fully reach: the sentient soul. This is where the drives, affects, passions and all the undefined feelings in the soul arise. Then we have a higher link of the human soul: the intellectual or mind soul. This is the soul that already lives more consciously within itself, that grasps itself within itself, that not only experiences itself in the surges that it feels surging up from the depths in instinct, desire and passion, but that, above all, feels compassion and shared joy, and develops within itself what we call concepts of understanding and so on. And then we have that part of the soul that we can call the consciousness soul, through which the human soul truly experiences itself in itself.

In the course of human development, these different parts have successively undergone their formation. If we go back to the Egyptian-Chaldean period, it was mainly the education for the sentient soul that people went through at that time. For the connections of the great cosmos could speak to the sentient soul, and these entered into the human soul without man being aware of it. The wisdom of the Chaldean-Egyptian culture was therefore attained unconsciously. When we move on to the Greek-Latin period, we have the special development of the intellectual or emotional soul, where through intellect and emotion — we can see from this that this soul element has two parts — the inwardness is expressed, which is already more imbued with consciousness. And in our time we now have — and this follows directly from what has been described — the culture of the human soul, whereby this human soul is to come fully to consciousness in itself, that is to say, to develop the consciousness soul. This is what reached the highest pinnacle in the nineteenth century: the objective world view, which leaves the soul alone with itself so that it can grasp its self, its I, with its consciousness soul. In order to grasp the innermost essence of the human being in its inner illumination, it was necessary that the soul did not present itself to the world in the semi-unconscious way of the Egyptian world view or in the way we have described it for the Greek-Latin , but that it broke away from the world view in order to develop within itself that which had to become strongest in it, the I, the consciousness soul. Thus, in the successive earthly lives, favorable opportunities gradually presented themselves for man to develop the sentient soul, the soul of mind or feeling, and the consciousness soul in the successive earthly cultures.

But now let us take a look at this legacy of the nineteenth century, this consciousness soul: it struggled – we can basically trace this in particular in the nineteenth century – struggled in the philosophy of a Fichte, in the subsequent philosophical representations, struggled even in the more materialistic philosophies, for example in the philosophy of a Feuerbach, who said: The idea of God is only the self-representation of man projected out of space.

Man set the idea of God outside of himself because he needed support in the lonely consciousness soul. And if one follows the most radical philosophers, Feuerbach and others up to Nietzsche, one sees everywhere the human soul coming to power and inner security after it has been torn away from the world view that has become objective. Through this process, we see the human soul developing in a very regular way, we see the development of that which reached its peak in the nineteenth century: the emancipation of the consciousness soul and the consciousness soul's taking hold of itself through its own power.

What is to set the tone in the next age is always prepared in an earlier age. It can be clearly demonstrated how the development of the intellectual or mind soul already plays a role in certain cultural phenomena of the Egyptian-Chaldean period; and in the Greco-Latin period, especially where it is post-Christian, for example in the work of Augustine, one can see how humanity struggles to prepare the consciousness soul. Therefore, we have to say: our human soul can only be fully understood when it prepares, in the midst of the age of the consciousness soul, that which is to be developed after the consciousness soul. What needs to be developed?

The inner development of the human soul strives towards what must be developed, but so too does the so-called objective world view itself. Let us consider several symptoms in conclusion. What has the nineteenth century, with its brilliant culture, achieved? We see one of the most brilliant natural scientists of the nineteenth century, Ds Bois-Reymond, with his objective world view. He wants to save – just read his speech “On the Limits of Natural Knowledge” – for the human soul what he needs for its inner security, and he seeks to find his way with the idea of the “world soul” because this soul of consciousness, which has become lonely and detached from the objective world view, is inexplicable to him. But the objective world view stands in his way. Wherever the human soul makes its appearance, it manifests itself in the brain, in the nerve cords and in the other instruments of action. Now Du Bois-Reymond is at the frontier of natural science. What does he demand if he is to recognize a world soul? He demands that someone show him an instrument in the universe that is similar to the one present in man when the human soul thinks, feels and wills. He says, for instance: Show me a tangle of ganglion balls and nerve fibres embedded in the neuroglia and supplied with warm arterial blood under the right pressure, corresponding to the increased capacity of such a world soul. He does not find it. The same Du Bois-Reymond demands this, who in the same speech also stated: If you observe the sleeping human being, from falling asleep to waking up, he may be explainable in scientific terms; but if you observe the human being from waking up to falling asleep, with all the drives, desires and passions, all the images, feelings and volitional impulses that arise and subside within him, he will never be explainable in scientific terms.

He is right! But let us see where the legacy of the nineteenth century has led us. Du Bois-Reymond says: “If I look at the sleeping human body scientifically, I cannot find anything that explains the interplay of the forces that are at work in our perceptions, feelings, impulses of will, and so on. For it is simply illogical to seek an explanation for the inner nature of the phenomena of the soul in the processes of the body, just as it would be nonsensical to seek an explanation for the organ of the lungs in the inner nature of air.

This will be the legacy of the nineteenth century: science will show that, even when it remains strictly on its own terrain, it cannot explain the workings of the soul and spirit in human beings from the processes that are available to it. Rather, it can be said without reservation: When this human body awakens from sleep, the soul and spirit are inhaled, as the lungs inhale oxygen or air; and when it falls asleep, the soul and spirit are exhaled, as it were. In the state of sleep, the soul-spiritual is alone outside the human body as an independent entity.

The legacy of the nineteenth century will be that natural science will fully unite with spiritual science, which says: Man has an ego and an astral body, with which he leaves his physical body and etheric body during sleep, is in a purely spiritual world during sleep with his ego and astral body, and leaves his physical body and etheric body to the laws that are peculiar to them. In this way natural science itself will demarcate its own field, and through what it has to admit it will show how spiritual science must be added to it as a complement. And when natural science itself will correctly recognize, for example, one of its greatest achievements: the natural development of organisms from the most imperfect to the more perfect, it will see that precisely in this development of the natural natural in the sense of Darwin's theory, in which the evolution of the human soul is not included, but which must first be grasped by the spiritual-soul if the merely earthly is to be organized into the human. A fine legacy of the nineteenth century will be a correctly understood natural science, showing how spiritual science is necessary to supplement natural science. Then, as a necessary consequence, the two will be in complete harmony. And the human soul will grasp itself by awakening the slumbering powers within it and recognizing itself.

In the Egyptian-Chaldean period, people were still in contact with the cosmos. This showed man his spiritual background. In the Greco-Latin period, man was still indirectly connected to the cosmos through the body. He still felt the cosmos because he felt the unity between the spiritual-soul and the physical. Now, the objective world view has become only a sum of external processes. Through spiritual science, however, the soul, by finding itself in its own spiritual-deep powers, will recognize itself in a new way in connection with the universe. The soul will be able to say: When I look down, I feel connected with all living things, with all the kingdoms of nature that are around me. But now, after going through the culture of the sentient soul of the Egyptian-Chaldean period, through the culture of the mind or emotional soul of the Greek-Latin period, and now having absorbed the culture of the consciousness soul, in which the gaze of the I was directed towards material culture , I feel connected to a series of spiritual realms: downwards to the animal, plant and mineral kingdoms when I look out materially, and upwards to spiritual realms, to the realms of the spiritual hierarchies, to which the soul belongs just as it belongs upwards, as it is otherwise accustomed to looking downwards towards the natural kingdoms. A future perspective is opening up before her that is fully in line with the perspectives of the past. Man has worked his way out of the spiritual contexts of the past; in the future he will work his way into the spiritual realms. The soul will feel a connection with the nature kingdoms through its spiritual-soul forces, and it will feel a connection with the spiritual realms through the spirit self. For just as our time is characterized as the time of the development of the consciousness soul, so in our time the development of the spirit self is preparing for the future of human spiritual culture, which will gradually mature.

When we look at the development from a spiritual scientific point of view, we see that it is quite organically necessary for this legacy of the nineteenth century to express most characteristically a task that was present: the task of rejecting the soul back to itself, throwing it out of the natural in order to force it to develop its own soul and spiritual powers. And this will be the best legacy of the nineteenth century, when the soul will see itself as having been torn away from everything, but feeling all the more encouraged to unfold its own powers. While the Age of Reason sought to make use of reason itself, the coming age must awaken still deeper forces slumbering in the depths of the soul, and thus a spiritual world will come into view, as the soul of the future must have it.

Thus the future will be grateful to the nineteenth century for having enabled the soul to develop the higher powers of objective science out of itself. That is also a legacy of the nineteenth century. If we consider the inner development of the human soul, we see that it must pass from the development of the sentient soul, through that of the mind or emotional soul and the consciousness soul, into the development of the spirit self. But man finds the spirit-self only when he is first torn away from all the external world by the scientific observation that is the legacy of the nineteenth century. If one looks at the legacy of the nineteenth century in this way and then goes into the details, one will see that the best thing about the positive results of the scientific heritage of the nineteenth century is the strengthening of the soul, because it then finds itself in that which science cannot give it. The soul will one day stand and feel with Du Bois-Reymond: Yes, the sleeping human body can be explained by the laws of physiology, but not what is inhaled by it as spiritual-soul. The soul will feel that it must raise to consciousness that which is unconscious in sleep through spiritual-scientific methods, in order to have a view into the spiritual worlds. And then a later Du Bois-Reymond will no longer stand so perplexed before the human body when he wants to explain it scientifically, because he will say to himself: the human soul is not in there at all, in the neuroglia and in the ganglion balls; so why should I then prove neuroglia and ganglion balls in the giant world soul?

We find the idea expressed in an outstanding nineteenth-century mind, that of Otto Liebmann, who only wanted to use what the nineteenth century could give him for an understanding of the sources of existence. Liebmann lectured on philosophy in Jena for many years: Why should we not be able to assume that our planets, moons and fixed stars are the atoms or even the molecules of a giant brain spreading out in the universe in a macrocosmic way? But he thinks that it will always be denied to human intelligence to penetrate to this giant brain, and that it will therefore also be denied to penetrate to the knowledge of a spiritual world soul at all. But spiritual science shows that Otto Liebmann was quite right. For it is impossible for the intelligence he speaks of to arrive at any kind of satisfaction of human longings in this field. Because this intelligence has first become great by emancipating itself from the objective world view, it is not surprising but self-evident that a philosophy built on this objective world view can find nothing in a world soul. If, in Du Bois-Reymond's sense, the natural scientist cannot find the human soul in the ganglia balls and neuroglia of the sleeping human body, why should one be able to find anything about the nature of the world soul in the giant ganglia balls of a giant brain? No wonder the physiologist must despair of it!

But these fundamentals are the best legacy of the nineteenth century. They show that the human soul is now thrown back upon itself and must seek and find the connection with the spiritual worlds, not through contemplation, but through the development of its inner powers. The human spirit will find, when it contemplates that conception of the world which it knows as the Darwinian theory of evolution, that its greatness is based on its having excluded itself. Man would not have come to the stage of development he has now reached if he had not excluded himself from the conception of the world. But when he understands this, he will realize that he cannot find in this theory of evolution what he himself had to extract. If one understands the Darwinian theory of evolution correctly, one will find, as it is not contradictory to it, to believe the spiritual researcher when he looks, in retrospect behind the phenomena of sense, at a spirit in which the human soul is rooted as a spirit.

This final lecture should show that in truth there is not the slightest contradiction between what is meant here by spiritual science and the true, genuine achievements of natural science, and that if one delves correctly into what the scientific world view, after the course of human development has been properly understood in spiritual scientific terms, human development, one knows precisely how it cannot be otherwise, and how the scientific world view, because it has become so, is the most beautiful means of educating the human soul to become what it should become: a being striving from the consciousness soul to the spirit self.

In this way, spiritual science is also shown to be part of the culture of our time. What was prepared in the Egyptian-Chaldean period with the culture of the sentient soul, and what was further developed in the Greek-Latin period with the culture of the mind or mind soul, has found its further development in our time in the culture of the consciousness soul. But everything that comes later is already prepared in the earlier stages. Just as there was a culture of the consciousness soul even in Socrates and Aristotle, which will continue for a long time in our time, so it is true that here, within our age, there must be the source for a true teaching for the spirit self. Thus the human soul grasps itself in connection with those worlds in which it is rooted, spirit in spirit.

In addition to all else, the natural science of the nineteenth century is a means of education, and the best means of education precisely for spiritual science. Perhaps it will be seen from the winter lectures that the spiritual-scientific views presented here regarding the heritage of the nineteenth century will provide a secure foundation for spiritual science, which should not become a conglomeration and chaos of something arbitrary, but something that stands on a foundation as secure as the admirable science of nature itself. If one believes that there must necessarily be a break between what natural science is and has achieved and what spiritual science is, then one could become disillusioned with this spiritual science. But when one sees how natural science had to become what it has become so that the human soul can find its way to the spirit in the new way, as it must find it, then one will recognize it as that which must necessarily be included in evolution as that which contains the seeds for the period of time that will follow our own just as our own follows those that have gone before. Then the apparent contradictions between the natural scientific and the spiritual scientific world picture will be reconciled.

Of course, I do not for a moment believe that in the short time of the lecture - which lasted so long - I have been able to exhaust even the slightest of what shows the continuing significance of the nineteenth-century scientific path with all its forms from the perspective of spiritual science. But perhaps by expanding on what has been said, by pursuing what was intended to be inspired today, especially by comparing the results of spiritual science with the correctly understood results of natural science, the honored audience will be able to see in their souls how a spiritual consideration of human evolution shows the necessity of spiritual science entering into the progress of human development. These lectures were organized and their keynote was always taken from this consciousness of an inner necessity for development. This lecture in particular was intended to evoke the feeling of how justified it may seem that the mere confidence that philosophers like Fichte and others sought to derive from the consciousness soul cannot be gained from the consciousness soul standing alone and shut up in its own thoughts, but only when the soul realizes and recognizes that there is something quite different within it than its mere intelligence and reason: when it finds the powers within itself that lead it to imagination, inspiration and intuition, that is, to life in the spiritual world itself, and when it realizes that out of a truly inner certainty about this, it may be spoken of again in the first third of the twentieth century – with the correctly understood legacy of the nineteenth century.

When Hegel, boldly building on what he believed he had grasped in the mere consciousness soul, once spoke significant words in his lectures on the history of philosophy, we may, in translation, his words, we may perhaps use them here at the end to characterize – not conceptually summarizing, but expressing like a feeling that arises like an elixir of life from the spiritual-scientific considerations. With some modification, we want to express in Hegel's words what the soul can feel for the security of life, for the necessary sources and foundations of existence and for all life's work, what it can feel in relation to the great riddles of existence, about fate and immortality. All this is such that the soul is met with the right worldly light, when it — but now not from an indefinite and abstract consciousness soul, but from a realization that in the soul there are dormant powers of knowledge slumbering in the soul that make her a citizen of spiritual worlds - when she is completely imbued with a feeling, so that this feeling becomes the direct expression of the spiritual science in question, making the soul secure and hopeful:

The human spirit may and should believe in its greatness and power; for it is spirit from the spirit. And with this belief, nothing in the cosmos, in the universe, can prove so hard and brittle that it does not reveal itself to it in the course of time, insofar as it needs it. What is hidden at first in the universe must become more and more evident to the seeking soul in its increasing realization and surrender to it, so that it can develop it into inner strength, inner security, inner value of existence and life!

AT the point of time in modern spiritual evolution when we see the dawn of the new world-conception breaking forth, at that time in which we must record the great achievements of Kepler and Galileo, in which Giordano Bruno, in a certain measure, outlines the great problem of a modern world-conception,—at this moment we meet the solitary thinker to whom the present reflections shall be dedicated, the simple shoemaker of Goerlitz, Jacob Boehme. He struggled with the highest problems of existence in a way which can occupy our thinking and feeling to this day in the deepest manner, and will probably occupy the thinking and feeling of human beings for a long time to come.

A peculiar figure this Jacob Boehme, a figure who strove and struggled in solitude, whereas elsewhere in the spiritual life the single currents united to form a great comprehensive tableau. And in a certain sense one might say that the solitary striving of Jacob Boehme appears almost as interesting, from a certain standpoint, as the flowing together of the different points of view which meet us elsewhere in that epoch. And then we see how, very strangely, what Jacob Boehme found in his own solitary mind, even in his century, received the greatest imaginable dissemination—the greatest imaginable dissemination we may say, considering the fact that we are dealing with a deeply significant spiritual matter. Precisely through the manifestations of his adversaries we see how far his influence extended after only a few decades had passed since his death. Again and again, Jacob Boehme was the object of appreciative and admiring, or rejecting and ridiculing, contemplation. And when we observe what came into being as his following, or as his opposition, we have the impression that both the adherents and the attackers knew they were dealing with a very strange phenomenon.

This phenomenon is strange, especially to those who wish to understand every personality that appears in the spiritual life of humanity on the basis of the immediate conditions, so to speak, of the age and the surroundings. We see, for instance, how people try to understand Goethe by collecting all sorts of details of his life, even the most unimportant, and believe that by assembling these details they can acquire this or that to explain his corresponding spiritual life. It is not possible in this manner really to acquire much for the understanding of Jacob Boehme. External influences are difficult to verify through external science, and it is still harder to understand how Jacob Boehme grew out of that which constituted the spiritual life of his time.

Many, therefore, have professed the opinion that in Jacob Boehme we have to do with a kind of spiritual meteor. All that arose there, all that this personality had to give, appears as if it had suddenly sprung up, revealing itself out of the depths of his strange soul. Others then have tried to explain that many a turn of expression, many a way of presenting his ideas, shows similarity in words and turns of expression to the formulae of the alchemists, or to some philosophical or other tendencies that were still alive in his time. But whoever enters more deeply into the whole mentality of Jacob Boehme will find that such a procedure has hardly more value than if one were to examine the “language” in connection with an eminent personality, who, after all, must always express himself in a language. For when Jacob Boehme makes use of alchemistic formulae, or such things, it is only verbal clothing. That which makes such an exceedingly powerful impression, however, on one who seeks to understand him presents itself with an originality such as is found only in the very greatest minds.

In contrast to this, there are a few clues which are not quite compatible with modern thinking—with the modern world-conception—but which, for the person who is capable of entering into such things, throw light on how Jacob Boehme was able to soar up to his high spiritual standpoint. In order to connect our reflections with his life, to the extent that it has a bearing here, we need mention only a few biographical facts.

Jacob Boehme was the son of very poor parents and came from Alt-Seidenberg in the vicinity of Goerlitz. He was born in 1575. In his youth he had to tend the cattle with other village boys. As is apparent from this, he grew up in complete poverty, and since a person growing up in this way does not have any particular means of education, we shall find it understandable that even as a boy of twelve or thirteen years Jacob Boehme could hardly read and only barely write. But another experience confronts us even during his boyhood, of which a faithful biographer heard from him out of his own mouth. We shall first tell this experience. As we have said, it is not one of those things which are quite intelligible to modern consciousness.

When Jacob Boehme was once tending the cattle with other shepherd boys, he withdrew from the company of the boys and climbed a moderately high mountain in the vicinity of his native locality, the “Landskrone.” He declared that he had seen there in the bright noontime something like an entrance-gate into the mountain. He went inside and there found a vessel, a kind of vat, filled with pure gold. That made such an impression of fearful awe on his soul that he ran away and retained only the memory of this peculiar experience.

One can, to be sure, speak of a “dream dreamed in the waking state.” One may, for all that, grant the right to those who are satisfied with such an explanation. But the essential point is not whether one calls such an occurrence a “dream,” or gives it another name, but what it releases in the mind of the person who “dreams” it, what effect it produces in the soul. And from the way in which Jacob Boehme later told this occurrence to his friend we see that it had engraved itself deeply on his mind, that it had released significant forces in his soul so that it had the highest psychological significance for him.

Let us, therefore, grant to the rationalists the right to explain such an experience, which was in any case a significant happening in Jacob Boehme's soul, in the way in which they likewise wish to explain the event of the appearance of Christ before Paul at Damascus. Only, an explanation which resorts to these things must also admit that such significant work as that of Paul, which is so intimately connected with Christianity, proceeded from a “dream.”

Even the boy Jacob Boehme, when he had this experience, felt something like the deepest stirring up of soul forces which are otherwise not active in the soul. The important thing is this inner releasing of deeper-lying forces of the soul. The important thing is the testimony of such a fact which proves that we have to do here with a human being who could descend to a far greater profundity in his soul life than thousands and thousands of others.

Another event of a similar nature must also be borne in mind, of which we must again say that it remained so fixed in Jacob Boehme's memory that the brightness and the significance of this event shone over his whole life, in so far as this life was an inner one.

In his fourteenth year Jacob Boehme was sent to a shoemaker as an apprentice and often had to stand guard, so to speak, in his master's shop. He was not permitted to sell anything. On one occasion—and this story, again, came from the mouth of his loyal biographer, Abraham von Frankenberg—an individuality who immediately made a singular impression on Jacob Boehme came into the shop and wanted to buy shoes. But, because the boy was forbidden to sell shoes, he said this to the stranger. The latter offered him a high price and it came about that the shoes were sold.

Then, however, the following took place, which remained in Jacob Boehme's memory throughout his life. When the stranger had departed and a short time had passed, Jacob Boehme heard his name called: “Jacob, Jacob!” and when he went out the stranger seemed to him even more singular than at first. There was something sun-like, shining in his eyes and he said words to him which sounded very strange: “Jacob, you are now still small, but you will once become an entirely different human being, about whom the world will break out in amazement. But remain humble before your God and read the Bible diligently. You will have to endure much persecution, but be strong, for your God loves you and will be merciful to you.”—Jacob Boehme regarded such an occurrence as much more essential than any other, external biographic experiences.

And his biographer relates further how Jacob Boehme himself told him the following: It was in the year 1600 when, during seven days, Jacob Boehme felt as if withdrawn from his physical body, felt as if he were in an entirely different world, felt as if, with regard to his soul, he was re-born.

We have to do here—if one wants to call it that—with a permanently abnormal condition of the soul. But Jacob Boehme experienced this, his “re-birth,” also simply more or less as something which could, according to his conception, take place with a human soul. He did not become, let us say, a visionary or a false idealist through this, nor did he become an arrogant person, but continued to practice his shoemaker's trade in all humility—or, we might say, in all sobriety. And even the experience of the year 1600, the withdrawal into another world, remained to him a phenomenon of which he said to himself: “You have looked into a kingdom of joy, into a kingdom of spiritual reality, but that is a thing of the past.” And he continued to live from day to clay pursuing his trade in his sober manner.

In the year 1610 this experience of re-birth was repeated. He then began to record what he had experienced in his states of exaltation, since he felt called upon to do this. Thus, in 1612 his first work, The Dawn in Its Ascent, came into being, later entitled Aurora. Regarding it, he said that he did not write it down through his ordinary ego, but that it was given to him word for word; that, in comparison with his ordinary ego, he lived in a being which was encompassing, which reached into all parts of the world and immersed itself in this world.

To be sure, the revelations did not do him much good. When several people noticed what he had to say, what he had written down, a few copies of the manuscript of Aurora were made and circulated. The result was that Gregorius Richter, the deacon of Goerlitz—where Jacob Boehme had meanwhile, in 1594, established himself as shoemaker—railed at Jacob Boehme from the pulpit and not only condemned his work, but also succeeded in having him called before the council of the city of Goerlitz. About this I will now simply repeat the words that we know from his biographer. He relates that the verdict of the council was that Jacob Boehme must be forbidden to write further, for only those who were academicians were permitted to write and Jacob Boehme was not an academician, but an idiot, and must, therefore, refrain from writing!

Thus Jacob Boehme was branded as an idiot. And, since he was a good-natured man on the whole, who could not quite believe—because of the simplicity in his nature—that he would be considered one of the damned entirely without reason, he did indeed resolve to write nothing further in the near future.

But then came the time when he could no longer do otherwise. And in the years 1620 to 1624, up to his death, he wrote rapidly, one after another, a great number of his works, as for instance: The Book of the Contemplative Life, De Signatura Rerum, or Concerning the Birth and Designation of All Beings, or the elucidation of the first book of Moses. But the number of his works is rather large and in this connection, many a reader may fare strangely. Some have said that Jacob Boehme repeats himself again and again. It is true; one cannot deny that certain things appear over and over again in his writings. If, however, a person draws the conclusion from this that you know the whole Jacob Boehme if you know a few of his works, because he always repeats himself—though we cannot simply contradict persons who say this—it must be said that whoever contents himself with having read one work of Jacob Boehme's and has no appetite to read the other works also, does not understand much of Jacob Boehme. But whoever takes the trouble to go through his other works will not rest, in spite of all the repetitions, until he has read even the very last ones.

If, from this characterization of his nature, we try to penetrate more into his train of thought, into the spiritual nature of Jacob Boehme, it must be said that for modern man, who lives only in the cultural life of our time, much indeed must be unintelligible, not only in the content of Jacob Boehme's works, but also in his whole manner of presentation. At first the presentation appears completely chaotic. To be sure, one becomes slowly accustomed to it. But then there still remains for many persons something that is a hard nut to crack. We find that he has very peculiar definitions of words—quite unintelligible for the modern mind. Thus we find that in his explanation of the world he again and again uses words such as “salt,” “mercury” and “sulphur.” And if he wishes to analyse what “sul” signifies, what “phur” signifies, and finds all sorts of deep thoughts therein, then these modern minds must say to themselves that one cannot do anything with this, for what can be the significance of offering explanations about a universal principle by explaining the syllables of a word individually, such as “sul” and “phur”? That is quite alien to the modern mind.

To be sure, if a person enters further into the mind of Jacob Boehme, he will find that Jacob Boehme clothes what he wishes tó say in all kinds of alchemistic formulae. But only when one penetrates through to what expresses itself livingly as the spirit of Jacob Boehme in what he found available, only then does one find that something entirely different lives in these formulae from what we know today as scientific thinking, as thinking with regard to world-conceptions, or any other thinking.

What lives in Jacob Boehme's soul resembles most closely that which has been characterized here in these lectures as the first stage of a higher spiritual life, as the stage of imaginative cognition. We have emphasized the fact that he who ascends from ordinary life in the sense world comes, through a special development of his soul, to the point where he perceives a new world of pictures, of imaginations. And we have stressed the fact—I beg you to call to mind precisely the character of this discussion¹ that, when the human being has brought it about that he does not only form imaginations, but that pictures, imaginative conceptions, shoot up out of the unknown depths of the soul-life and he experiences a new world, then he who desires to ascend to new cognition must make the firm resolution to suppress completely this first flashing up of an imaginative world in the soul and to wait until it rises up a second time from a much deeper-lying world.

The whole state of soul, the whole inner mood to which Jacob Boehme comes is, therefore, most nearly comparable to that which meets a person in his soul-life who ascends to supersensible knowledge. Nowhere, to be sure, does it appear that something like that which modern spiritual-science proclaims as its conscious methods is already to be found in Jacob Boehme. But whoever were to believe that all this appeared in Jacob Boehme as if of its own accord would, nevertheless, be wrong. He himself once said that he had striven unceasingly for the spirit's—for God's—assistance, and that a luminous, imaginative world resulted from this unceasing striving.

Thus, we cannot say that he was simply a naive, imaginatively cognizant person, but we must say that he grasped naively at the means which lead the human being to the height of imaginative cognition. It is to be assumed, naturally, that such an imaginative force was in his soul. In other words, he arrived at imaginative cognition by just the same paths, only more quickly, more as a matter of course, than one can arrive at it through such methods as are described in the book Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and Its Attainment. Thus Jacob Boehme stands before us as an imaginatively cognizant human being. But this imaginative knowledge struggles to the surface with primal power, as if it were a matter of course, as if borne by a strong inner will.

Thus, we see this strong inner will, which cannot express itself in external deeds—his humble occupation prevents this—surrounding his soul like a flood, so that the soul immerses itself in this flood. We see powerful pictures being born out of this will, through which he tries to solve the riddles of the universe. In Jacob Boehme, it is not so much the individual results that matter, as this mood and condition of his soul. And he feels that, in his striving, he is driven to something which is not the ordinary cognizing human ego, but which is connected with the forces that bind the human being—out of the subconscious in his soul, out of the depths of his soul—to the whole cosmos; that is, to what lives and weaves outside in nature.

The human being who really has an earnest desire for knowledge feels that there is not only something rational in the act of cognition, but something that he achieves for himself through suffering and pain, and through the overcoming of suffering and pain. And he notices, when he tries to penetrate into nature and existence with present-day, ordinary means, how he really separates himself from nature and existence through all such means. But when we expose forces in our soul which rest otherwise in the subconscious, then we feel that these are connected with nature and existence in quite another, more intimate sense. In order to explain this, I should like to draw upon the following.

It is a well-known fact, and one hears it often related, that in regions where an earthquake or some other elemental event is imminent, certain animals flee from the locality of the earthquake or some similar occurrence, or at least become restless, so that they are like prophetic announcers of what is to happen. We may say that the instinctive life of the animal is more closely connected with what takes place outside in nature than the whole state of soul of the human being. But in the depths of the human soul, there lives something which is not the same as the instinct of animals, but which is deeper than this animal instinct, and which is also closely connected with the forces of nature. And in descending into the depths of his soul, Jacob Boehme felt himself more closely interwoven with the forces of nature.

But one thing stands out particularly. It has been emphasized that only when that which appears as imaginations and an imaginative world has been suppressed, extinguished, and then lights up again as if of its own accord,—only then does this second imaginative world have value. (As I said, I beg you to call to mind the earlier discussions.) Now, it is most singular if we compare the path of Jacob Boehme with this.

In the year 1600 he experiences a re-birth, feels himself transported into a spiritual world, into a “kingdom of joy.” Then he continues to live in sober simplicity. For ten years it is as if what he had experienced were submerged. Then it emerges a second time in the year 1610. Did not then the path which we represented as the right one appear as a natural phenomenon in Jacob Boehme's soul? For us, it is this that makes Jacob Boehme approach so closely that upon which we ourselves have focused our attention as being the natural way into the supersensible worlds. If we take this into account his experience will not seem as strange to us as it may have seemed at first sight.²

It will have no value for the objective cognition of the sceptic, to be sure, if one reflects profoundly on the combination out of the syllables “sul” and “phur,” or about other such things. But I beg you to call to mind what we explained concerning human speech once on an earlier occasion³ how we showed that in the course of human evolution “speech” really preceded abstract, conceptual thinking, and how Jean Paul is entirely right when he emphasizes that the child learns to think through speech, instead of forming speech through thinking. Speech, therefore, is something more elementary, primal than thinking. When we see how the whole of nature arises again in our thoughts, then we feel how thought is separated from the realities of nature by a world chasm. But, when the sound as something more like the sounds in nature—and, after all, speech was originally composed of such sounds,—when the sound of speech is wrested from the human soul, then something of the whole system of law in the universe works into the depths of the soul. And then a kind of echo in relation to nature tears itself loose in an entirely different way from that occurring when something is released out of thoughts as an echo.

A soul of the present time no longer has any feeling for the affinity of speech and sounds in nature. As a contemporary soul one can only slowly struggle through to the feeling that in all speech there is something which directly resembles an echo of the impressions of the external world. In such a personality as Jacob Boehme, who draws deeper forces from his soul with elemental power, it is only natural that in this respect also, in feeling also, as it were, he is carried back to that impression of speech which was once characteristic of humanity and which the child, more or less unconsciously, still develops.

And now if we extend what has just been set forth to include the strange analyses concerning the joining together of syllables into words, then we can understand that what nature brings about in the human soul is only a feeling by means of the sounds; that nature wishes to create her own language through sound itself. Precisely because Jacob Boehme stood closer to nature in his soul, he also lived more in speech than in thought, and his whole philosophy is more a feeling with, a sympathizing with, that which lives and weaves outside in nature than any abstract grasping of things. What I mean to say is that, when a person lets a thought of Jacob Boehme's really have its effect on him, he feels as if the thought were as akin to what Jacob Boehme observed as he himself is akin only to that which he senses as some kind of taste, when he also feels contact with nature.

Thus, does Jacob Boehme feel the contact with nature. He feels in the inner being what weaves and works and lives outside in nature. He lives nature's life with it, and in his representations he gives, really, that wherein he participates, so that one feels what he perceived vibrating in his words. To him, therefore, words are something which he feels especially to be like that which is the “How” in nature itself. One does not have to ponder, therefore, over the question whether such discussions as the above-mentioned about “sul” and “phur” mean anything particular in Jacob Boehme, but one should try to re-experience in connection with this soul how it makes the experience of the universe into the experience of the soul and gives as its revelations that which the soul can experience.

No one understands Jacob Boehme who simply supposes that he perceived thunder and lightning, clouds, or cloud transformations, or the growth of grass like a modern human being. A person understands him only if he knows that with the flashing lightning, with the rolling thunder, with the changing clouds something is transformed for his soul-life, so that something takes place in his soul which stands there as the solution of the corresponding riddle. Thus, what takes place in the world becomes for Jacob Boehme a riddle of his own experience.

And now, if we look at him thus, we understand how he could wrestle with a task which meets us elsewhere during his time also, and which long occupied other spirits, even the greatest spirit of recent times. This same sixteenth century, in which occurred the birth of Jacob Boehme, gave birth to the Faust riddle, which places next to the striving and struggling man the enemy of man, who drags down man's striving nature into the base, sensual—into that which Jacob Boehme's age called “the

Devilish.” Poetically, Goethe still struggled with the problem which places “evil” in the world structure. Must not the human being ask again and again: How does it come about that the irregular, the unsuitable, places itself antagonistically in the harmonious universe, in the wise guidance of the world? And the question of the origin of evil lies in the riddle of Faust. It is really already in the book of Job, but it appeared especially powerfully in the sixteenth century.

In what manner could this question appear before the mind of Jacob Boehme?

We need only to take a few words from the Dawn in Its Ascent and we shall see at once how that which is elsewhere a world problem becomes for Jacob Boehme at first an inner soul problem. There he says approximately the following words: If an understanding and thoughtful man shows himself anywhere in the world, the Devil at once meddles with his soul and seeks to drag his nature down into the vulgar, common, sensual,—seeks to ensnare the man in pride and conceit.

Here we see at once how the problem is grasped by Jacob Boehme as a soul problem. We see how he searches in the soul itself for the power of evil, which interferes with the good soul forces. And the question arises for him: What does the soul have to do with the soul forces that strive towards evil? Thus the problem of evil becomes for Jacob Boehme finally an inner soul question.⁴ But because for him soul and universe correspond to each other, the soul at once expands into a universe. And now the peculiar thing for him is that the question of evil is transformed into an entirely different question, into the question of human consciousness—in fact, of all spiritual consciousness, of the whole character of the life of consciousness.

It is difficult today with our current conceptions to illuminate Jacob Boehme's soul life and what the cosmic questions and their solutions became for him, and a person cannot make himself very clear if he uses the words of Jacob Boehme, because they are no longer current coin in our time. I will try, therefore — entirely in the spirit of Jacob Boehme, but with somewhat different words — to approach what he wished to say about the question of evil, which becomes with him a question concerning the whole nature of spiritual consciousness in general.

Let us once try to think how our consciousness works, what our whole consciousness would be if we were not in a position to hold fast in memory, as thought, what we once experienced in our soul, in our consciousness. Let us try to think how our consciousness would have to be something entirely different if we were not capable of drawing up out of our memory what we experienced yesterday, the day before yesterday, years ago. The whole content of consciousness rests on the fact that we can remember past experience, and our consciousness does not extend back beyond that point of time to which we can remember. We began then to grasp ourselves as an “ego,” to have the coherent thread of our consciousness, to be at home in our soul life.

Upon what, therefore, does the whole nature of consciousness depend? Upon the fact that we know: Now we are at this moment experiencing something in our consciousness. When we experience something, we are directly connected with this experience. In the moment when we experience something we are nothing else than our experience itself. A person who visualizes a red colour is united with the experience of it at the moment when he visualizes this red colour. Whoever conceives an ideal is, at that moment, one with the ideal. I le distinguishes himself only afterwards from his experience, while before he was one with it. Thus our whole consciousness is something that we first experienced and then stored up as an objective thing in our inner soul life. Such storing away in the objective makes our consciousness possible. We could not develop any consciousness if everything that we experienced were always forgotten—completely removed. By placing our experience before ourselves as counterpart (Gegenwurf),⁵ as Jacob Boehme says,—by confronting ourselves with it as with an opposite—only thereby does our real consciousness ignite. We must observe this in connection with the simplest fact of our consciousness.

In his clairvoyant contemplation Jacob Boehme extends this experience, which any and every consciousness can have, over all the world. He says: And if a Divine Being in the world had once had the capacity only to live in Himself, but not to confront Himself with His experience—as counterpart—consciousness would never have come to be, even in a Divine Being. But for the Divine Being the counterpart is the world. Just as we confront ourselves with our conceptions, just as we become conscious of ourselves through the object, so the counterpart for Divine Consciousness is the world. And everything that surrounds us Divine Consciousness set out of Itself, in order to become aware of Itself thereby,—just as we develop our consciousness only when we set up our own experiences as counterpart.

For Jacob Boehme the grasping of this thought was not a theory, but something that brought him satisfaction with regard to a question which signified a matter of destiny for him—the great Faust question. He could now say to himself: “If I am carried back in thought into Divine Consciousness prior to the world, as it were, this Divine Consciousness could come to Itself, become real consciousness, only by confronting Itself with the world, in order to become aware of Itself through Its counterpart.” Thus, everything that lives and weaves and is took its rise from the Divine-Psychic, from a Will of this Divine-Psychic, which developed the craving, as Will, to become aware of Itself. And in that moment (this now became clear to Jacob Boehme) when the Unitary Consciousness set up Its counterpart and wanted to become aware of Itself—that is, duplicated Itself, created, as it were, the reflected image of Itself—It created this reflected image in a variety, in the multiplicity of single members, just as the single human soul does not have its life only in single limbs, but in limbs that have a certain independence, such as hand, and foot, and head. A person does not get close to the reality of Jacob Boehme if he describes him as a pantheist. He must go through the train of thought in a similar way, must understand how Jacob Boehme conceived everything that appears before us as a “counterpart of the Godhead.”

To the counterpart of the Godhead, which the Godhead set out of Itself in order to become aware of Itself thereby, belongs also the human being as he is. From this point of view of his. Jacob Boehme says: Men direct their gaze upwards; see the stars, the masses of clouds, the mountains and the plants, and would often assume the existence of still another special region of the Godhead. But I say to you, you unreasoning human being, that you yourself belong to the counterpart of the Godhead; for how could you sense anything and become aware of anything of Divine Being in yourself if you had not flowed forth from this Divine Being? You have sprung from this Divine Being. He placed you opposite Himself, as He also gave birth to you out of Himself, and you shall be buried in Him. And how could you be raised from the dead if an alien Godhead stood confronting you? How could you call yourself a child of God if you were not one with the substance and being of God!

That he does not refer to any ordinary pantheism is expressed by him through the fact that he says: “The external world is not God; it will never in eternity be called God, but a being in which God reveals Himself. … If one says that God is all. that God is heaven and earth and also the external world, it is true, for everything has its origin and genesis in Him. But what can I do with such a speech, which is no religion?”

One cannot call him a pantheist. Just as the question concerning the essential nature of the world is not, for him, something artificially sought after, neither is that which he gives himself as an answer to it. Rather is it an experience for him. He felt the prerequisite conditions determining his own consciousness and extended these over Divine Consciousness, because he knew clearly that the nature of his own capacity for consciousness was an echo of the actualities of the world.

And in the answer to the question of the soul and the Divine in the soul he finds also the answer to the question concerning the origin of evil. This is something exceedingly characteristic of Jacob Boehme, which has again and again aroused the admiration of profound thinkers. Thus, for instance, Schelling was very significantly affected when he became aware of the manner in which Jacob Boehme approached the question concerning the significance of evil in the world, and other thinkers of the nineteenth century also admired the profundity of thought with which Jacob Boehme took hold of this question.

One may say, with regard to many persons who have sought an answer to the question concerning the origin of evil, that they searched for the primal cause of evil. It is characteristic of Jacob Boehme that he went further than that point which, according to the opinion of many people, is the sole and only limit to which one can go. For where else should a person go if he does not wish to stop at this primal cause? Jacob Boehme goes beyond the primal cause when he wishes to solve the question concerning the significance of evil. He goes to that which he calls, significantly, not the primal cause, or primal ground (Urgrund), but the groundlessness, (Ungrund), and here we actually stand before an experience of the human soul in Jacob Boehme which can be admired in the highest degree if one has the requisite organ.

Certainly, the ordinary soul which has its roots in the modern world conception does not, perhaps, possess this organ; but one can have this organ which feels admiration when, in Jacob Boehme, the transition is made from the primal ground to the groundlessness. And, after all, it is really something like the egg of Columbus, something exceedingly simple. For, at the moment when Jacob Boehme had solved the world riddle for himself in the way we have just described—when it was clear to him that there is a relationship between God and the world like that between the soul and the limbs of the body—then he could also say to himself: When the world came into existence as counterpart of the Godhead, there appeared in this counterpart the dividedness, the differences among the limbs, as we should say.⁶ The dividedness of the single limbs of the body confronting the single soul made its appearance. Is not every single limb of the body good with regard to functions of the soul? Can we not say that the right hand is good, the left hand is good, everything is good in as much as it serves the functions of the soul? But cannot the right hand, because of its relative independence, indeed just because of its excellence, injure the left hand?

Here we have the independence of the corporeal, that which needs to have “no ground” (cause), set up against that which constitutes harmony. We see this placed in the primal ground (cause), which simply results from the fact that from the “primal ground” we pass on to the “groundlessness.” Just as we do not need to seek in light the cause of darkness, so we do not need to seek in good the cause of evil. But as the world proves itself, for Jacob Boehme, to be the counterpart of the Godhead, the possibility arises in this world of dividedness for the individual limbs to work against each other, in that, because they must have their independence for the sake of the purpose of the world—according to the goal-seeking character of the world—they must also develop this independence.

Thus, for Jacob Boehme, evil does not have its roots in that which one explains, but in that which we find as “groundlessness” without the need for explaining it. But the latter appears thereby, as if of its own accord, as a counterpart of good. And now evil, the unsuitable, the harmful in the world becomes for Jacob Boehme itself a counterpart, in contrast to good,—just as we become aware of ourselves through contact with an object. We move along in space; we do not think of ourselves. But we begin at once to think of ourselves if, for instance, we knock our head against a window. Then we become aware of ourselves through the counterpart, through the object. Just as Jacob Boehme confronts consciousness with the counterpart, just as he experiences himself through the counterpart, so the good, the suitable, the advantageous and useful becomes aware of itself, for Jacob Boehme, through the fact that it has to preserve itself in the presence of the harmful and unsuitable. It becomes aware of itself in that “evil” became the counterpart of good, like the objects that are experienced through collision with the external world.

Thus Jacob Boehme sees in good the force which assimilates its counterpart, just as man, in his memory, assimilates more and more what he himself first set out of his consciousness. We find thus a constant absorption of evil and, thereby, an enriching of the good with the evil. And as darkness relates itself to light, in that light shines into darkness and thereby first becomes visible, so does good first become effective by working into evil and relating itself to evil as light to darkness. Just as light graduates to the different colours through darkness and could not appear as light if darkness were not opposed to it, so can good perform its world-function only by experiencing itself through its counterpart, through evil.

Thus Jacob Boehme looks into the world. He sees the good effective in such a way that it finds itself confronted by evil, but that it takes evil into its own domain, absorbs it, so to speak. Thus a pre-earthly occurrence appears for Jacob Boehme in such a way that he says to himself: The Deity once placed other spiritual beings opposite Himself. These were, like our present nature at a later stage, a counterpart of the Deity. Thus these beings were already a counterpart of the Deity, whereby the Deity achieved consciousness of Himself. But they behaved towards the Deity like the limbs that turn against their own body.

Thereby the Being Lucifer came into existence for Jacob Boehme. What is Lucifer for him? He is the Being who, after the counterpart was created, used the separateness, the multiplicity, to rebel against his Creator as independent counterpart. Thus, in the forces of the world which differ from and struggle against one another Jacob Boehme finds that which must be, but which contributes to the general evolution, nevertheless, by being absorbed in the course of development. In the same way he also conceives that all deeds of the opponent of the Gods—in order that the deeds of the Deity Himself may come to realization so much the more powerfully through the counterpart—are absorbed by the Deity, and that the self-realization of the Deity becomes only so much the more glorious through the forces which the opponent develops.

Into the depths of the world Jacob Boehme pursues the thought which extends the experiencing of consciousness to the cosmic experience of the origin and primal state of evil. And he puts into a simple formula—not what he gave theoretically, we must say, as the solution of the cosmic riddles, but what he experienced,—into the formula: No “Yes” without a “No,” for the “Yes” must first experience itself through its counterpart, through the “No.” “No Yes without a No” is the simple formula into which Jacob Boehme brought the whole problem of evil. And it is not a theoretical formula, but in this philosophy, there lies something like a most primal, most elemental experience.

For to know that there is no Yes without a No, that evil is absorbed by good and contributes to the evolution of the world,—that may yet be nothing. But it is something else to be a struggling soul, a soul that experiences pain and suffering, temptations and seductions, and to say to oneself: “All of this must be present, and although it is present I can procure for myself out of my living philosophical word—not by theorizing—the certainty and the consolation and the hope that the best in me will find the possibility of overcoming what is only the counterpart, the “No,” through the primal, through the Primordial Impulse (Wurf),⁷ through the “Yes.” And no matter how much I become entangled in evil, and no matter how small the ray of light is that extends over it,—I can and may hope for liberation, so that the good in me and not the evil will win the victory!

If such a philosophy passes over into certainty of redemption, then it is something which is, in this manner, connected with the personality, to be sure, but which has with this character of personality at the same time general human significance. If a person allows this to work upon his soul, he will gladly go on from this struggling soul which rises into the cold abstractions of the “Yes” and “No” in order to acquire therefrom the warmest soul content and the warmest soul experiences—then he will gladly go on from this soul, which gains through struggle confidence in its world conception, to the lonely man in Goerlitz who had no opportunity to found a school, for the time which men, under other circumstances, spend in spiritual things he had to spend in making shoes ... he had to gain the time by strenuous effort for his numerous works. Such a person will gladly go to the man whose books reveal how he struggled with language because his external education was so limited, but whose teachings, nevertheless, were disseminated and spread abroad after his death; who sat on his shoemaker's bench and had only few friends to whom he could open his heart. He had friends, it is true, to whom he wrote letters, but their number was small.

One sees him thus in his loneliness and feels as if a necessary connection existed herein. Just as one can think of Giordano Bruno only as journeying through the world, moving from land to land in order to proclaim something about the world as if with trumpet tone—just as one feels in him, who enters into the multiplicity of phenomena, that this journeying belongs to this world conception—so does one feel in the other case that this lonely shoemaker experienced something which could be experienced only in such a way that it took place as if in a solitary dialogue with the spirits of existence—in this solitary seership which we characterized at the beginning.

If we feel thus, then the sentiment grows in us, with regard to what the human being needs in order to solve the riddles of the world in a thoughtful, feeling way, that the greatest which the human being can experience in the world is independent of place and time, is subject only to the human soul's capacity for profound meditation, and that the soul can undertake the greatest world-migrations, the migrations into the spirit-regions, everywhere and always. Then there rings out to us from Jacob Boehme's soul, and touches our understanding, that which characterizes his world conception in such a significant expression when he says:

Wem Zeit wie Ewigkeit
Und Ewigkeit als wie die Zeit,
Der ist befreit von allem Streit.

To whom time is like eternity
And eternity like time,
He is freed from all strife.

This does not characterize his world conception in a theoretical respect, but it characterizes what his world conception really came to be through the fact that he was such a very special human being. For we have been able to emphasize that through his whole being he was more intimately connected with nature than the normal human being,—that he experienced the weaving and activity of nature in his own soul experiences. This leads us to sense a certain necessity in a designation which Jacob Boehme's friends gave him. They gave him a happy designation. For let us just consider the following:

When there was already a widely diffused, wonderfully detailed science over in the East, in the Orient, whose wisdom we admire if we learn to know it, we still find the very simplest spiritual culture on Central European soil. We find that something lives in all the souls of Central Europe which is like an intimate connection of the forces in the depths of the soul with the forces of nature and the nature-beings, and that the people threw twigs on the ground and saw in the “Runes” which took form all kinds of riddles which they sought to solve. These human beings were decipherers of “Rune riddles.” And of all that speaks out of the souls of the human beings in the forests of ancient Germania about what lives in nature, about what rustles through the trees, or lives mysteriously in human souls themselves,—we feel as if something of all this were active in Jacob Boehme's soul.

Then something in Jacob Boehme may well become comprehensible to us which would otherwise be the most difficult thing for us to comprehend today. We are not forcing things if we compare with the picture of the decipherer of runic riddles, who solves all sorts of riddles through the twigs which have been thrown on the ground and claims to perceive the revelations of the Divinity Himself—if we compare with this the way, for instance, in which Jacob Boehme sets up the syllables “sul” and “phur” runically out of his relationship with the feeling for speech, and wants to solve world riddles thereby. Here he appears to us like a last offspring of the forests of ancient Germania, and we understand why his friends gave him the name “Philosophus Teutonicus.” This includes, however, his significance for the coming times.

We look towards him and see how he struggled with the most exciting problems that can play into the human soul, how he arrived at peace in this struggle, and how his last words: “I enter into Paradise” were the seal to consistency of soul, to soul-practice. It is this that led him to peace of the soul. A breath of faith lives in all his books, and from this point of view Jacob Boehme can have significance for us and for all times. When it comes to the practical life consequence of a philosophy, this “Philosophus Teutonicus” will always be a dominant influence as regards that which he can really be for the soul if it becomes familiar with him.⁸

His adversaries sometimes make a strange impression—beginning in the year 1684, when the first rather strong refutation of Jacob Boehme by Kallo appeared, up until our time, when we also have a writing against Jacob Boehme, by a Leipzig scholar of the past century, Dr. Harles. It seems rather peculiar how Harles wishes to show that Jacob Boehme did nothing but warm up old alchemistic things, and then says that, after he had often tormented himself for days in order to present Jacob Boehme in this way, he was often glad when he could approach Matthias Claudius in the evening in order to find recuperation and edification in his words, after he had had to concern himself thus with Jacob Boehme throughout the day. And he desires also for his readers that they not allow themselves to be beguiled by the glistening and glimmering formulae of Jacob Boehme, but that they also take refuge in the simple and naive Matthias Claudius, whose gift to the soul is such that the soul does not have to seek its salvation in being elevated to the highest heights of spiritual life.

It may be that this Dr. Harles, the antagonist of Jacob Boehme, had to take refuge in Matthias Claudius in order to escape from the glistening, high-flown formulae of Jacob Boehme, and that he could find peace in Claudius, in contrast to his experience with Jacob Boehme. Only, it makes a strange impression on one who knows that Matthias Claudius himself took refuge, after he had achieved what Dr. Harles found in his works, in some one who not only knew Jacob Boehme, but even translated him—in Saint Martin, who was a faithful pupil of Jacob Boehme! Thus it is very good not only to know wherein Dr. Harles, the antagonist of Jacob Boehme, sought edification, but also to know wherein Matthias Claudius sought his edification!

But the world conception of Jacob Boehme is one that is suited to lead beyond contradictions, if only one does not stop at it. The whole nature of the lectures that have been given here has shown that within the world conception which is represented here we should not remain standing at any one phenomenon, but that whatever of the spiritual world can be grasped directly through the forces of our age should be grasped. Certainly Jacob Boehme remains a significant personality, a star of the first magnitude in the spirit-heavens of humanity—yet no one will stop at him. The representations of spiritual-science which are given today are, therefore, by no means given from the standpoint of Jacob Boehme, but from that of our age, and the next time we shall show, in contrast, what an entirely modern spirit has to say.⁹

But Jacob Boehme becomes still more interesting if we transport ourselves into his spirit-nature—which stands upright in simplicity and solitude, and takes flight with his soul into the highest region of clairvoyance,—and if we find how this spirit-nature could spread peace over Jacob Boehme's soul, which can subsequently be felt by all who approach him with understanding or, at least, seeking for understanding. For this reason, intellectual characterizations will not come close to the reality of Jacob Boehme, but only such characterizations as endeavour to feel what a human being like Jacob Boehme felt, what streamed forth from him—as, for instance, in the three lines which I have cited.

And only then can the words with which I essayed to characterize Jacob Boehme gain their significance if those present feel that they were not said in order to culminate in a theory or theoretical characterization of Jacob Boehme, but to culminate in this: that, when we are directly confronted by the personality of Jacob Boehme, something streams out from it—and streams out so much the more warmly and intensively the more we learn to know it—which can sum up what has been said in words designating his peace, his serenity:

To whom time is like eternity
And eternity like time,
He is freed from all strife.

• 1. See lecture by Rudolf Steiner entitled: Die Wege der übersinnlichen Erkenntnis.
• 2. See also: Rudolf Steiner, Kosmischc und menschliche Geschichte,, Vol. V, Lecture 3.
• 3. See: Rudolf Steiner - Geisteswissenschaft und de Sprache.
• 4. See also: Rudolf Steiner, Geisteswissenschaft als Forderung unserer Zeit; Vol. VII, Das Böse im Lichte der Erkenntnis vom Geiste.
• 5. The term Wurf is almost untranslatable. It is apparently intended to suggest the primordial source from which all that is takes its rise. Gegenwurf is that which is created by the Wurf, its counterpart.
• 6. He did not use these words, but we wish to characterize according to the essence rather than the words, for we shall, thereby, come closer to understanding him.
• 7. The term Wurf is almost untranslatable. It is apparently intended to suggest the primordial source from which all that is takes its rise. Gegenwurf is that which is created by the Wurf, its counterpart.
• 8. Compare: Rudolf Steiner—Die Rätsel der Philosophie, Vol. I.
• 9. Rudolf Steiner, Die Weltanschauung eines Kulturforschers der Gegenwart (Herman Grimm) und die Geistesforschuug.

“Spiritual science aims to show what can be gained in widening one's spiritual horizons. It can be said that for the purpose of gradually entering into the whole outlook inherent in spiritual research, anyone immersing himself in Herman Grimm?s spirit has the finest precepts.”—Rudolf Steiner, GA 62

This is a lecture, given by Rudolf Steiner, entitled Die Weltanschauung eines Kulturforschers der Gegenwart, Herman Grimm, und die Geistesforschung and contained in the volume Ergebnisse der Geistesforschung (Results of Spiritual Research) GA 62. The series in which this lecture was given at the Architektenhaus in Berlin, may be said to underline its overall importance for Rudolf Steiner: Held January 16th 1913 subsequent to a lecture January 30th on Raphael. Also known as, Herman Grimm, Contemporary Culture and Spiritual Developments, and Anthroposophy.

This single lecture is the 8th of 14 lectures in the lecture series entitled, Results of Spiritual Investigation, published in German as, Ergebnisse der Geistesforschung. Translated by Peter Stebbing

Translated by Peter Stebbing

It could easily appear as though what is set forth here as spiritual science stood in isolation to what is otherwise proclaimed and of a tone-setting nature in the cultural life of the present. However, it can only appear so to one who conceives of this spiritual science in a somewhat narrow-hearted sense, seeing in it nothing more than a sum of teachings and theories. On the other hand, whoever recognizes it as a spiritual stream open to new sources will become aware that parallels can be drawn to modern cultural life in various ways. It will be seen that this manner of viewing life called spiritual science can be applied to other, in some degree related directions. A direction of this sort is the subject of today's considerations—as represented by a prominent personality of modern cultural life, the art historian and researcher Herman Grimm.

Herman Grimm [the son of Wilhelm Grimm of the Brothers Grimm] was born in 1828 and died in 1901. He appears indeed as a quite characteristic figure of modern life, and yet he is, at the same time, so distinctive and unique as to stand apart. Today's considerations can connect especially well onto this personality. To anyone having occupied himself with Herman Grimm, he appears as a kind of mediator between all that relates to Goethe, and to our own spiritual life.

By reason of his marriage to the daughter of a personality, who stood close to the circle of Goethe, namely the sister of the romantic poet Clemons von] Brentano,[ Bettina Brentano [1785-1859], Herman Grimm was connected in a quite special sense with everything associated with the name of Goethe. Herman Grimm was related to her in that she was his mother-in-law, the same Bettina Brentano who had brought out Goethe's remarkable exchange of letters with a child. Bettina Brentano's unique memorial shows us Goethe enthroned like an Olympian, a musical instrument in his hands, while she presents herself as a child grasping at the strings. From the Frankfurt circle of La Roche, in her relation to Goethe she was able (like few others) to enter into Goethe's spirit. Even if some things as presented in the letters are inexact, being colourfully mixed together in various ways—a combination of poetry and truth—it still has to be said: Everything in this remarkable book, Goethes Brefwechsel mit einem Kinde [Goethe's Exchange of Letters with a Child], grew in a heartfelt manner out of sensing Goethe's whole outlook. In a wonderful way, it grants us an echo of his wisdom-imbued worldview. Bettina Brentano was married to the poet Achim von Arnim [l781-1831], who had contributed to bringing out the fine collection of folk poems called Des Knabens Wunderhorn [1806] [The Boy's Magic Horn]. By virtue of the connection with this circle—as mentioned, Gisela Grimm, Herman Grimm's wife, was one of the daughters of Bettina von Arnim—Herman Grimm grew up from youth onwards, as it were, amid personalities who stood in close proximity to Goethe. In all that he took up in his education, Herman Grimm absorbed something of an immediate, elemental spiritual breath of Goethe. Thus, he felt himself as belonging to all those who had stood personally close to Goethe, even though he was still a child the time of Goethe's death [in 1832J, rather than one who had “studied” Goethe and Goetheanism. Herman Grimm counted as having taken into himself, in a direct and personal way, something of Goethe's essential being, his magical power, his natural humanity.

With inner participation, Herman Grimm experienced the development of German cultural life during the decades of the mid-nineteenth century. In doing so, he established, so to say, his own “kingdom” within this German cultural life. He can be called a spirit who, in an individual manner, starts out from whatever stimulated him, that furthered the development of his own powers. In this way, out of the whole range of cultural life, a realm subdivided itself for Herman Grimm that suited his aims, a realm in which he felt at home. Within this domain in which Herman Grimm felt himself at home, he understood himself to be, lo to say, the spiritual “governor” with respect to Goethe. Goethe's spirit appeared to him as though it lived on. And in seeking out what derived from Goethe and what was compatible with him in cultural life, entering into this, it was always the essence of Goethe that he sought. This then became a yardstick for him in evaluating everything in cultural life.

These were decades of struggle in German cultural life, decades in which everything to do with Goethe receded, following his death. So much else of immediate everyday concern stood in the forefront, rather than what proceeded from Goethe. During that period, numerous other things asserted themselves in the cultural life of Germany, while little was heard of Goethe. On account of his connection with Goethe, Herman Grimm regarded himself as one whose task it was, quietly yet actively to cultivate and carry over Goethe's ethos to a future time that he certainly hoped would come, a time in which Goethe's star would shine out once more in the European spiritual firmament.

In that he regarded himself as, so to say, the “governor” of Goethe's spiritual domain, Herman Grimm stood somewhat apart in his relation to cultural matters. It seemed appropriate, if not self-evident to see him as having the air of a “lord.” Even in his stature, his physiognomy, his gestures, in his conduct, there was something about him suggestive of an aristocrat. And, it can be said: For anyone not accustomed to looking up to someone as to a lordly personality, Herman Grimm's whole demeanour as though compelled acknowledgement of the aforementioned status. I still fondly recall being together with Herman Grimm in Weimar, which he often liked to visit. On one occasion, he invited me as his only guest to a midday meal. We spoke about various matters that interested him. We also talked—and I was pleased that he wanted to have this conversation with me—about his comprehensive life-plans. And when a certain time had passed after the meal, he said, in his inimitable, humorous and quite natural manner, such that one accepted it from him as something innate, “Now, my dear Doctor, I wish graciously to dismiss you!” As though a matter of course, it actually made a self-evident impression on me. And it accorded with Herman Grimm's whole manner of conducting himself, so that, one granted him a certain air of lordliness.

Herman Grimm's whole lifework bears something of the same attribute. One cannot take up one of his major or minor writings, with their harmonious and so succinctly constructed sentences without feeling: all this affects one as though the author's personality stood behind it, regarding one with soulful participation. This contributes to the wonderful quality in Herman Grimm's writings. In every respect they are the product of his soul-imbued personality and have their immediate effect as such. In this way, his style takes on a certain justified, noble pathos. However, this noble pathos is mitigated everywhere by the individual, human element that breaks through. One accepts his style despite its elegance. Everywhere, one senses his origins in having sincerely absorbed Goethe's spirit. Yet this is not all; it becomes apparent that with him the Goethean element has undergone something of the development of German Romanticism. We sense in Herman Grimm's style a liberation from all that can broadly be termed “commonplace” or “customary.” We have the impression of a singular personality secluded within himself.

Herman Grimm's orientation could possibly have led to a certain one-sidedness, had something else not played a part, binding him closely to tradition; Herman Grimm was, after all, the, son of Wilhelm Grimm and the nephew of Jakob Grimm. Known for inaugurating modern linguistic research, these two collected the German fairy tales that have in the meantime profoundly permeated German life. They listened to the sagas and fairy tales told them by simple folk, that were almost forgotten and remembered by only a few remaining souls. Brought to life again by the Brothers Grimm, they now live on.

Despite a refined style in everything he produced, Herman Grimm also had close ties to popular tradition, combining this with what might otherwise have been a one-sided direction. We still have to stress something further by which he appears harmonious and complete. In taking up the works of Herman Grimm, we encounter something of his adaptability—a capacity to connect with the various spiritual phenomena in which he immersed himself in the course of his life. A certain isolation is required for someone to submerge themselves fully in the phenomena and facts of past centuries. This adaptability, this quality of “softness” with regard to Herman Grimm acquires its “skeleton,” however, its necessary “hardness,” by reason of something else that intervened in his upbringing. Both his father and his uncle belonged to the “Göttingen Seven,” who in the year 1837 submitted their proclamation protesting the abolition of their country's constitution. They were consequently expelled from the University of Göttingen. Thus, already as a child, Herman Grimm experienced a significant event and its aftermath. For there were consequences both for his father and his uncle, in that they not only lost their positions, bur their daily bread as well, at the time. Herman Grimm often referred to how he had experienced historical change in this way, even already as a nine-year old boy, and not merely via book-learning.

At a time when little was said of Goethe in Germany, attention having been diverted to other things, Herman Grimm viewed himself as a representative of Goethe's ethos. But he did experience a resurgence of interest in Goethe and was himself able to contribute to it. At the beginning of the seventies of the nineteenth century, he was able to hold his famous Goethe lectures [“Goethe-Vorlesungen” 1874-75] at the University of Berlin, also published in book form. Anyone getting hold of it as a young person, and able to find the right relation to it, will undoubtedly speak of it in later years as being of special significance. And, as set forth in this book, Herman Grimm clearly shows himself as someone who knew the various ramifications of Goethe's soul life.

We gain a clear sense of how Herman Grimm viewed a personality such as Goethe. We find nothing of a small-minded biographical compulsion—to flush out all manner of more or less indifferent traits. Rather do we find an immersion in everything that was important for Goethe's development—the endeavour to pursue what Goethe experienced in life, what lived in his soul, and how this re-constituted itself, taking on form to become a creation, of Goethe's phantasy. How, he asks, in forgetting everything of a particular life experience, did this re-arise for Goethe to become the product of creative phantasy—a new experience?

Thus, in Herman Grimm's interpretation, Goethe raises his life-experiences a stage higher, to a sphere of pure spiritual contemplation. We see Goethe ascend to spiritual experiences. Herman Grimm demonstrates this with regard to each of Goethe's works. And we gladly follow him in pursuing this course, since with Herman Grimm nothing intrudes that can otherwise so easily enter into such a portrayal—that a single soul-force, e.g., reason or phantasy, becomes paramount, as it were, and one no longer feels the connection to immediate life. Herman Grimm goes no farther than he can go as an individual in contemplating Goethe's work. In the end, we are led by Herman Grimm to the point where the work takes its start from Goethe's life experience. One feels oneself transported everywhere into unmitigated spiritual life. Goethe becomes a sum of spiritual impulses. This breath of the spiritual extends throughout Herman Grimm's Goethe book.

What Herman Grimm ascribed to Goethe in this way has its roots deep in Herman Grimm's spiritual configuration. Long before commencing these considerations that led to his lectures on Goethe, a grand, a colossal idea had stood before him—the idea of viewing occidental cultural life as a whole in the same way he had done, individually, with regard to Goethe. The idea stood before his mind's eye of following three millennia of western cultural life so as to reveal everywhere how human sensibility transforms everyday events in the physical world to what the human soul experiences upon ascending to the realm of “creative phantasy,” as Herman Grimm called it. Thus, he becomes a unique kind of historian. For Herman Grimm, history was, so to say, something altogether different from what it is for other modern historians.

History is, after all, customarily studied in that documents, materials, are first collected, and from these the attempt is made to present a picture of humanity's development. Although materials, external facts, were of enormous importance for Herman Grimm, they were nonetheless not at all the main thing. He often entertained the thought: Could it not be that for some epoch or other precisely the most significant documents, the decisive ones, have disappeared without a trace—lost, so that one actually passes by the truth most of all in focussing too conscientiously and exactly on the documents? Hence, he was convinced that, in abiding most faithfully by external documents, one is least of all capable of providing a true picture of human development. Only a falsified picture could arise in keeping strictly to external documents alone.

However, something else has arisen in the cultural life of humanity. What took place outwardly, what happened has, thanks to leading individualities, undergone a spiritual rebirth. This is evidenced by personalities who have transformed it artistically, who have utilized it for cultural purposes. Thus, in looking back for instance to the time of ancient Greece, Herman Grimm said to himself: Some documents exist concerning this Greek age, but these are insufficient to enable one to understand the Greek world. Yet what the Greeks experienced has found its rebirth in the works of Greek art, has been re-enlivened by significant Greek personalities. Immersing oneself in them, letting the Greek spirit affect one, a truer picture of the Greek world is attained than in merely assembling external facts. In this way, the facts themselves disappeared, so to say, for Herman Grimm. One is inclined to say, they melted away from his world-picture. What remained in his world-picture was a continuous stream of what he called the creations of “folk-phantasy.”

In contemplating Julius Caesar, for example, he not only took account of the historical documents, he considered what Shakespeare had made of Caesar as of equal significance, comparable to what is contained in the existing documents. Through characteristic human beings he looked back at the age in question. For Herman Grimm, the course of humanity's development became something always handed on from one personality to another, seeing it as a spiritual process encompassed by what he termed creative phantasy. Proceeding from this point of view, he sought to gain a picture of the creative folk-phantasy at work in western culture—a sense of the actual course of events in the development of humanity, so as to be able to say: The epochs of western culture follow one upon the other, supersede each other—from the earliest epochs up to the present, i.e., from the oldest times to which he wished to return, up to his own period, the age of Goethe. They therefore represent an ongoing stream, the influence of folk phantasy within western cultures.

Starting out from this urge, he turned his attention early on to that grandiose phenomenon of western cultural life, Homer's “Iliad.” This occupied him for a period of time during the 1890s, leading to his truly exemplary book, Homer. One gladly takes up this volume again and again in wanting, from a modern viewpoint, to immerse oneself in the beginnings of the Greek world. Adopting his general standpoint, it shows us Herman' Grimm from another side. His gaze is directed to the world of the gods as depicted in Homer's “Iliad”—to the battling Greek and Trojan heroes, and the question arises for him: How do matters actually stand with regard to this interplay of the world of the gods with the normal human world of warring Greek and Trojan heroes? This becomes a question for him. It is indeed striking, what a tremendous difference there is in the Homeric portrayal, between the humans walking around and the nature of those beings described as immortal gods. And Herman Grimm attempts to present the gods in Homer's sense as portraying, so to say, an “older” class of beings wandering on the earth. Even if Herman Grimm, in his more realistic way, sees these beings as “human beings,” he does look back into a culture that in Homer's time had long lost its significance, a culture that had been superseded by another, to which the Greek and Trojan heroes belong. Thus, Herman Grimm has an older and a younger class of humanity play into one another in Homer's “Iliad;” and what has remained over of real effects of a class of beings that had lived previously, enters for Herman Grimm (in Homer's sense) into what takes place between Greece and Troy.

Herman Grimm saw the further progress of humanity in this way—as a continual supplanting of older cultural cycles by newer ones and an interplay of older cycles with newer ones. Each new cultural cycle has its task, that of introducing something new into the general development of humanity. The old remains extant for a while and still interacts with the new.

It can be said that what Herman Grimm investigated, to the extent possible in the last third of the nineteenth century, has now to be set forth once more from the point of view of spiritual science. He did not look further back than the Greek age. For this reason, he was unable to arrive at what recent spiritual research describes in looking to the lofty, purely spiritual beings of primeval antiquity, exalted above the human being. He did, however, frequently touch upon results of recent spiritual research—as nearly as anyone can without conducting such research themselves.

In going back to earlier stages in the development of humanity, we attempt, in spiritual research, to show that we do not arrive at the animal species in the sense of the Darwinian theory that is interpreted materialistically nowadays. Rather, we attempt to show that we come to purely spiritual ancestors of the human being. Prior to the cycle of humanity in which human souls live in physical bodies, there is another cycle of humanity in which human beings did not yet incorporate themselves in physical bodies. Herman Grimm leaves the question undecided, so to say, as to what was actually involved with the “gods,” before human beings stepped onto the earth. However, he does recognize the ordered sequence of such cycles of humanity. And this results in an important point of contact with what spiritual science presents. That he takes account of such regular periodic stages taking place ~~ brings him especially close to us.

He attempts to extend his spiritual observations over three millennia. The first millennium for him is the Greek millennium. With Herman Grimm, one is inclined to say, there is something like an undertone in his manner of characterizing the Greeks, as though he were to say: In looking to the Greeks, they do not appear constituted like human beings of today, particularly in the oldest periods. Even someone like Alcibiades [ca. 450-404 B.C.] appears to us like a kind of fairy-tale prince, it is as though one beheld what is superhuman. Still, out of this Greek world that, as already mentioned, Herman Grimm presents as being altogether unlike the later human world, there towers ell that arose in the subsequent Greek world end in what follows, becoming the most important constituent of our cultural life. And finally, at the end of the first thousand years contemplated by Herman Grimm, the most significant impulse in humanity's development stands before his soul: the Christ impulse.

Herman Grimm is sparing in what he has to say about the figure of Christ, just as he is restrained in various other matters. But the occasional observations he makes show that he would as little go along with those who would “dissolve” Christ, as it were, to the point of a mere thought impulse, as he would go along with those who want to see Christ Jesus only in human terms. He emphasizes that two kinds of impulses actually proceed from the figure of Christ—one of colossal strength, that continues to work on throughout the further development of humanity—and the other impulse which consists in immense gentleness. Herman Grimm sees the entire second millennium of western cultural development taking shape in such a way that the Greek world is as though absorbed by the Christ impulse and the resulting mixture of Christianity and Greekness is incorporated into the Roman world, overcoming it. Out of this something quite unique arises. That is his second millennium, the first Christian millennium. The Roman element is not the main thing for him, but rather the Christian impulses. Everything of a political or external nature disappears for Herman Grimm in this millennium. He looks everywhere at how the manifold Christ impulse makes itself felt. His conception of Christ is neither narrow. nor small, but broad. When a book on the life of Jesus, La Vie de Jesus [1863], by Ernest Renan was published, Herman Grimm referred to it in the periodical he edited at the time, “Künstler und Kunstwerke” [Artists and Works of Art]; he attempted to show how pictorial representations of the Christ figure had undergone changes over the centuries both in the visual arts and in literature. He sought to demonstrate how the Christ impulse undergoes changes. He pointed out that people had always conceived of the Christ impulse according to their own outlook. In Ernest Renan he saw an instance of someone in the nineteenth century who conceived of Christ once again in a narrow sense only.

In Herman Grimm's view, Christianity needed about a thousand years to send its impulses into the rivulets and streams of western spiritual life. Then came the third millennium, the second Christian one, in which we still find ourselves today. It is the millennium at the dawn of which spirits such as Dante and Giotto arose, as also artists like Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael and so on, followed by the works of Shakespeare and Goethe. These cycles in the development of humanity, an ongoing stream_, he spoke of as an expression of the being of creative phantasy. Again and again Herman Grimm sought to present in lectures give to his students, this rhythmically subdivided, ongoing stream of humanity's development. Herman Grimm aimed to show how single creations had their place within the unbroken flow.

Thus, for him, Michelangelo, along with Raphael, Savonarola, Shakespeare and others, such as Goethe, were in a manner of speaking the spiritual constituents that become explicable on seeing them against the background of the ongoing stream of creative phantasy. For Herman Grimm this was especially apparent at the source, in the ninth or the tenth century before our era, with Homer. Thus, Herman Grimm addresses himself in an immediate way to the human soul, in drawing our attention to a specific work of art—be it Raphael's “'Marriage of Mary and Joseph,” a painting, of the Madonna, or one of the creations of Leonardo da Vinci, or. later, of Goethe. He grants us the feeling of standing as though directly within the unique qualities of the particular work. In considering with him the arrangement of colours, the figures and their gestures, while standing inwardly before the work of art, there emerges for us something like a tableau of the entire progress of humanity—now called forth by a single entity in that onward-flowing, all-encompassing stream of creative phantasy—over three millennia.

Thus, with Herman Grimm, one is first conducted into the intimate aspects of the work of art in question and is then led up to the summit from which the total stream can be surveyed. However, that is not something he considered in a theoretical manner. It seemed entirely natural for Herman Grimm to look at the totality of the onward flowing spiritual stream of humanity's development in this way. As he explained it to me, as mentioned at a midday meal, with his whole soul. he actually lived, as a matter of course, within this spiritual stream, and he could not look at a single phenomenon in any other way than as though it were excerpted from this mighty stream of humanity's development.

The whole of western cultural development, seen as folk phantasy, stood before his soul, though not as a general abstract idea, but filled with real content. He saw himself as inwardly connected with this luminous content extending over millennia, such that everything he wrote appears to one as individual segments of an enormous work. Even in only reading a' book review by Herman Grimm, one has the impression as though it were cut out from a colossal work setting forth the whole development of humanity. One feels oneself positively placed before such a colossal work, having opened it, and as though one were reading a few pages in it. It is the same with an article or an essay by Herman Grimm. And one comprehends how Herman Grimm could say of himself, in the evening of his life, in writing the preface to his collection of Fragments, that the idea had floated before him of a portrayal of the ongoing stream of folk phantasy, and that therein the whole of western culture had appeared to him, A particular subject he had pursued appeared as if it had been taken out of a finished work. However, he placed no more value on what had been printed than on what he had only written down, and on what he had written down, no more value than on what lived in his thoughts.

In referring to this, one would like to add a further impression, without putting it into an abstract formula—having been fond of Herman Grimm, remaining so, and in valuing his work and the kind of person he was. Herman Grimm was never able to reach the point of actually carrying out what stood before his mind's eye as something so beautiful, so colossal, so magnificent that even his works on Homer, on Raphael, on Michelangelo, on Goethe, appear to us as fragments of this comprehensive, unwritten work. We read the lines of the introduction to the Fragments mentioned above with a certain feeling of wistfulness. He states there that, though it would most likely not come about, it would perhaps be feasible to rework into a book what he had to say to his students year after year—and newly revised every year—concerning the progression of European cultural life in the last form these lectures took. One reads these lines today the more wistfully, as it did indeed not come to such a rewriting. We had to see Herman Grimm pass away, knowing what lived in his soul intended for present-day culture—having this sink with him into the grave.

We have characterized the sweeping cultural horizons underlying Herman Grimm's written works. Spiritual science intends to show what can be gained in widening one's spiritual horizons. It can be said that for the purpose of gradually entering into the whole outlook inherent in spiritual research, anyone immersing himself in Herman Grimm's spirit has the finest precepts. Apart from the breadth of his horizons, we see how he approached the phenomena, how his thoughts and feelings led him to everything he wrote in his comprehensive works on Homer, Raphael, Michelangelo and Goethe. And, bearing in mind what is set forth in his other writings, one sees that Herman Grimm distinguishes himself in significant ways from other spirits, in possessing attributes belonging to the kind of soul-deepening we have spoken of in describing the path the soul has to take in order to enter the spiritual worlds.

We have stressed that for the spiritual path, the intensity of soul-forces has to become greater. Deeper soul-forces are to be called forth that otherwise slumber. Inner strength, inner courage and boldness are required to a greater extent than in ordinary life; concepts are to be grasped more sharply. The soul needs to identify itself more fully with its own being, with the forces of thinking, feeling and willing. Initial signs of this are evident everywhere with Herman Grimm, by which he was, for example, in a position to describe works of art in such an intimate and personal way, as in the case of Raphael and Michelangelo. This is a precursor, however, to further illuminating the spiritual world. The basis of Herman Grimm's historical research does not lie in what is nowadays called “objectivity,” but in his allying himself with the cultural phenomena he portrays, as accords with the spiritual world. In this way, wholly forgetting itself and yet in a rare sense conscious of itself, the soul immerses itself in the corresponding cultural manifestation.

This becomes particularly evident when he directs his attention to a single cultural phenomenon, such as Raphael, elevating this to the overall stream of human spiritual life. His impressions then become bold, powerful ideas—and what others do not venture to say with the same shade of feeling, or with the same subtlety of ideas, Herman Grimm does venture, becoming in this way a representative of the spirit. And he then stands before us with such boldness that we are sometimes reminded of the Gospel writers. It is just that they wrote more in keeping with mysticism, while Herman Grimm wrote in the sense of a modern spiritual discourse. Just as the Gospels reach upward to attain the horizon of mankind as a whole, so Herman Grimm reaches upward with his Raphael book to the horizon of mankind as a whole.

It is miraculous when, in his audacious way—seemingly tearing his soul out of himself and striding as though alongside Raphael—as in an overall stream of evolution—he erupts in words that can truly tell us more than any mere presentation of world history: “Raphael is a citizen of world-history; He is like one of the four rivers that according to the belief of the ancient world flowed out of Paradise.”

In letting such a sentence duly affect one, Herman Grimm's perception of Raphael takes on an altogether different character, compared to what other authors have to say. Hence, for Herman Grimm, the various personalities of history merge into the overall stream of spiritual life. It could also be said, he brings the highest spiritual spheres down to the personal element. And in speaking the following heartfelt words, Herman Grimm further expresses his relation to leading cultural figures:

“If, by some miracle, Michelangelo were called from the dead, to live among us again, and if I were to meet him, I would humbly stand aside to let him pass; if Raphael came by, I would follow him, to see whether or not I might have the opportunity of hearing a few words from his lips. With Leonardo and Michelangelo one can confine oneself to reporting what they once were in their day; with Raphael one has to start from what he is for us today. Concerning the two others, a slight veil has passed over them, but not over Raphael. He belongs among those whose growth is as yet far from being at an end. we may imagine that Raphael will present ever new riddles to future-generations of humanity.” [Fragments, Vol. II, p.170]

This counts as a characteristic mood, rather than as something normally objective in the sense of what is normally demanded nowadays. But if does describe matters in such a way that we feel ourselves transposed, in an immediate way to what had lived in Herman Grimm's soul in writing- such sentences. It becomes understandable that such a spirit had to struggle in coming to terms with such a world-historical figure as Raphael. Oddly, as he himself relates, it was quite different for him, in describing the life of Michelangelo. The portrayal of the life of Michelangelo by Herman Grimm is a marvellous document, though in some respects perhaps, it counts today as having been surpassed. Seen against the background of the life of that time, the figure of Michelangelo stands out significantly from other figures—as also from the unique description of the city of Florence. Herman Grimm places a tableau before us in contrasting two spiritual entities, Athens and Florence. With that, the weaving together of three millennia as characterized by Herman Grimm, appears as a mighty background upon which Dante and Giotto appear, along with other painters of that time—followed by figures such as Savonarola, and finally Michelangelo himself, evident.

It becomes evident that Herman Grimm responded differently to Raphael and his surroundings than to Goethe, while presenting everything with no less familiarity. In the case of Herman Grimm's Goethe portrayal, we sense everywhere that he had grown up as a spiritual descendant of Goethe. With his Michelangelo portrayal, we feel how he enters into everything personally, wandering the streets, visiting every palace in Florence. ... other matters, as it were. Besides personally acquainting himself with other matters, he succeeds in standing as it were, before Michelangelo, and in depicting his actual manner of working. All this is as though cast from the same mould.

This differs from what he presents concerning Raphael. There we sense a wrestling with the material, with the spiritual image of Raphael. It is as though Herman Grimm were never able to achieve satisfaction. He describes having taken up the material again and again, while nothing appeared adequate to him of what he had already published. That was true even of his last works—of what he finally attempted as a portrayal of Raphael's personality. This remained a fragment, appearing in the collection of essays entitled Raphael as a World Power, from which the sentences derive that were just read out.

Why did Herman Grimm struggle with the material, precisely in the case of Raphael? It is because he could only present something to his own satisfaction in uniting himself completely with the material. In Raphael, however, he saw a spirit characterized in the words quoted: “Raphael is a citizen of world-history. He is like one of the four rivers that, according to the belief of the ancient world, flowed out of paradise.” And thus, with every statement applied to him, Raphael grew to giant size. Herman Grimm could never be satisfied, since he could not capture this “world-power” in a book. If the comprehensive breadth and grace of his spirit is evident in the portrayals of Homer, Michelangelo and Goethe with his Raphael discourse we see the profound uprightness, the profound honesty of Herman Grimm's personality.

Whoever takes up his book on Homer will possibly find it not scholarly enough. But Herman Grimm states on the very first page, that this book is not meant to be a contribution to Homer research. As already set forth; here, Herman Grimm could conduct himself in this and similar matters much like a spiritual “lord.” Thus, it appears quite natural that, in collecting his ideas on Goethe for publication, he boldly started out from the view that every other book he had come across concerning Goethe fell short. What seems like brazenness to some, can be taken for granted in the context of his literary and artistic abilities.

That is how he relates to everything in cultural life. Hence for those who adhere to the standpoint of erudite scholars, Herman Grimm's Homer book may seem intolerable. All the many questions that have been raised concerning Homer—whether or not he actually lived, whether the “Iliad” was put together from so and so many details, and so forth—all that did not concern him. He took it as it was. In this way, however, it became clear to him how wonderfully it is composed, how what comes later always refers to what preceded it. Everything that shows this inherent composition appears to us inwardly coherent. But apart from that, what appears most salutary for a spiritual researcher, is his immersion in the soul-life of the Homeric heroes. Everywhere, we see Herman Grimm's soul-imbued style extend to the soul-life of Homer's heroes. Everywhere we see the Achilles-soul comprehended, the Agamemnon-soul, the Odysseus-soul, and so on. As a description of souls, this book is overpowering in its effect, in spite of the familiarity of the stylistic presentation! We are led not only to the heights of historical contemplation, but also deep into the souls of the single Homeric figures, some scholars will inevitably say, Herman Grimm has taken the “Iliad” at face value, with disregard for the whole of Homer research and all preliminary study, accepting it verse for verse! Indeed, he does so—quite “amateurishly”—and the dry conclusion could then be: There someone has written a book without any preliminary study.

Did Herman Grimm in fact write this book without any preliminary study? Anyone concerning himself with the works of Herman Grimm will find the preliminary studies, only they look different from the preliminary studies of the usual experts. The preliminary studies of Herman Grimm lay in soul studies, in immersing himself in the secrets of the human soul. And one can convince oneself that no one could have shed such light on the Homeric heroes without those preliminary studies. Herman Grimm looks for what held sway in Homer's Phantasy. But what he says reveals him to be the finest knower of human souls. We may expect remarkable things of him in considering the way viewed Homer's heroes—from Achilles to Agamemnon to Odysseus. How did he find the words to write, in his Homer book and other works, what can seem to the researcher so uncommonly spiritual? He was able to do so on account of quite definite preliminary studies. And these are to be found among the works of Herman Grimm's first period.

Above all, we have the wonderful collection of novellas [1862] that is perhaps less read today than other modern products of its kind. However, these should be read by those who take an interest in spiritual things. As a collection of novellas, it is an intensive attempt to get to know human souls, to fathom human secrets and the soul's activity beyond the physical plane. The first of these novellas, “The Singer,” belongs to Herman Grimm's earliest phase as an author. In this work it is shown how a man acquires a deep, passionate yearning for a woman of a broad spiritual nature. However, these two personalities are never able to come together. The woman sends this ardent man away from her social circle, while everything lives on in the man's soul in the way of impulses that drew him to her. On the other hand, what proceeds from his soul saps at his bodily strength. Set forth as corresponds to spiritual research, we see him gradually destabilized in his soul. He is taken in by a friend to live on his estate, becoming, however, entangled again in the woman's “net.” The friend recognizes that it is high time to fetch this person his friend adheres to so completely. She does come—but too late. Whereas she is in front of the house, the individual concerned shoots himself.

And now comes something, taken up unreservedly in spiritual research, which Herman Grimm so often touches upon in artistic expression, but allows to devolve into indefiniteness. Briefly and succinctly he describes how, in the singer's imagination the deceased lives on. The scene is unforgettable in which, feeling her entire guilt in the death of this man, she sees him approaching from the realm of the dead, night after night. This now fills the content of her soul. It is not described as being a mere figment of her imagination, but in the sense of someone who knows there are secrets that reach beyond the grave. It is a wonderful description, that tells how the friend plants himself in front of the woman when she says the deceased comes to her—continuing right up to her final letter to the friend, in which she expresses that she herself now feels close to death. For her, the deceased, to whom she was so closely bound, had drawn her towards him from the realm of the dead. Probably no modern author has found the right tone, in touching on the spiritual world with such sincerity.

In spiritual research we present how, in going through the portal of death, what otherwise always remains united with the human being—also in sleep—the so-called etheric body, raises itself along with the higher soul-members, out of the physical body, passing over into the spiritual world. In the field of spiritual research, we draw a picture of how the corpse-remains behind and how the human being with his ether body loosens himself, step by step, one member after the other, from the physical body. The etheric body is then for a time the enclosure for the higher soul-members of the human being. That is an idea with which those who approach closer to spiritual research can become more and more conversant. In what follows we shall be able to consider in what an admirable way the artistic soul of Herman Grimm touches upon these facts of the spiritual world. This will lead us again to the question as to why, for deeper reasons, Herman Grimm did not develop his cultural discourse into a comprehensive work.

Apart from his novella, Herman Grimm wrote a further work, a novel, Unüberwindliche Mächte [1867], [Insurmountable Powers], in which, as with his work in general, his refined style leads us to a contemplation of the world and of life. Particularly remarkable is what might be called the clash of two cultures in miniature. The one world adheres to title, status and rank. Deriving from an old lineage, an impoverished count lives in the afterglow of his hierarchical status. Wonderfully contrasted in this novel is the way in which the world of old prejudices and rankings encounters the New World. The quite different views and notions of America play into this. The individual identifying himself with hierarchical prejudices, whom Herman Grimm calls Arthur, encounters Americans. He meets Emmy, the daughter of Mrs. Forster, who has grown up with American values. We see this count passionately enraptured by Emmy.

It would be impossible even to outline the rich content of this novel adequately. We encounter the whole contrast of Europe and America. In addition, there is the contrast of the old Prussian milieu and the newly constituted Prussian milieu arising as the outcome of wars. It is a tremendous cultural “painting” in which the characters are featured, and from which they emerge. Only this much can be indicated: that, as a result of the confluence of these streams, Arthur, the count, dies a tragic death right before he was to marry Emmy. A deluded relative considers himself the rightful heir to the count's lineage, seeing the count as a bastard. Stung with envy and jealousy, he opposes the count, and on the eve of his marriage, the count is shot down by this individual.

Someone wanting to contemplate this novel merely rationalistically might consider it as concerned with the unbridgeable prejudice outstanding, However, the expression “insurmountable powers” can perhaps hardly seem more justified than when Herman Grimm, unintentionally indicates the idea of karma, the idea of the causal connection of destinies in human life—as though knotted together one after another. We see him depict forces at work in destiny that can only come into play in working over from earlier embodiments—from previous earth-lives. He does not describe this in speaking theoretically of “forces” or of “karma,” but in simply letting the facts speak for themselves, giving expression to these powers that, then appear in a certain way corresponding to the ideas of spiritual research. We see a karmic destiny unfold; we see insurmountable karmic powers come to expression. And we see something further:

Emmy remains behind. The final glance that fell into Arthur's eyes as he lay there, his heart shot through, was when she bent over him and their eyes met in a certain expression. An utterance of Herman Grimm remains unforgettable, in saying, the spirit gave way at the moment his eyes assumed the peculiarity of appearing as no more than physical instruments. But now we encounter once more Herman Grimm's penetration of worlds that lie beyond death—what one would like to call his chaste penetration of worlds out of which souls work on, in remaining real once they have gone through the portal of death.

In a brief concluding chapter, Herman Grimm shows us Emmy gradually becoming infirm. It is entirely characteristic of his close connection to matters of soul and spirit, that he describes Emmy's approaching death. She is brought to Montreux. Montreux and its surroundings are uniquely described. However, Herman Grimm does not describe Emmy's passing like authors who have no relation to spiritual matters, but rather as someone taking account of how the secrets of death, of the realm beyond, speak to the soul. I would render something incomplete if I did not add in conclusion Herman Grimm's own words on the death of Emmy:

“This was Emmy's dream.

“Between midnight and morning, she believed she woke up.

“Her initial glance at the window, through which a pale light streamed in, was free and clear and she knew where she was. She also heard her mother, who slept next to her, breathing, However, a moment later, with a sense of pressure she had never felt before, overwhelming anxiety overcame her. It was no longer the thoughts that had tormented her during the last few days, but as though a giant hand were holding all the world's mountains over her by a thin thread, and that at any moment the fingers holding them could loosen, and the whole mass would fall down on her, to remain lying on her eternally. Her eyes wandered hither and thither looking for a glimmer of light, but there was none; the light of the window extinguished, her mother's breathing no longer audible, and stifling loneliness all around, as though she would never come alive again. She wanted to call out, but could not; she wanted to touch herself, but not a limb obeyed her. All was completely silent, completely dark; no thoughts could be grasped in this frightful, monotonous anxiety: even memory was taken from het—and then, at last a thought returned: Arthur!

“And wondrously now, it was as if this one thought had transformed itself into a point of light that became visible to the eyes. And to the extent the thought grew to become boundless longing, this light grew, spreading out, and suddenly, as though it sprang apart and unfolded itself, it took on form—Arthur stood before her! She saw him, she recognized him at last. It was surely he himself. He smiled and was close beside her. She did not see whether he was naked, nor whether he was clothed: but it was him, she knew him too well; it was he himself, no mere phantom that had taken on his form.”

Thus, Herman Grimm has the one who has long since gone through the portal of death approach her, now a seeress; at the moment of her death she approaches the deceased, addressing his soul: “She did not see whether he was naked, nor whether he was clothed: but it was him, she knew him too well; it was he himself, no mere phantom that had taken on his form.”

“He stretched out his hand to her and said, ‘Cornel’ Never had his voice sounded as sweet and enticing as now. With all the strength she was capable of, she tried to raise her arms towards him, but she was unable to do so. He came still closer and stretched out his hand closer to her, ‘Come!’ he said again.

“For Emmy it was as though the power with which she attempted to bring at least a word over her lips, would have been capable of moving mountains, but she was not able to say even this one word.

“Arthur looked at her, and she at him. With only the possibility of moving a finger, she would have touched him. And now, most terrible of all: he appeared to shrink back again! ‘Come!’ he said for the third time. Sensing he had spoken for the last time, that the terrible darkness would break in again upon his heavenly gaze, filled now with a fear that tore at. Her as frost splits trees, she made a final attempt to raise her arms to him. It was impossible to overcome the weight and the cold that held her captive—but then, as a bud bursts open, from which a blossom grows before our eyes, there grew out of her arms, other shining arms, out of her shoulders, gleaming new shoulders. And lifting these arms toward Arthur's arms, his hands grasping her hands, and floating slowly backwards, drawing her after him, the whole magnificent figure with him, rose out of Emmy's.”

The emergence of the etheric body out of the physical body cannot be described more wonderfully, in having been undertaken by a pure artist-soul. That was a spirit, that was a soul that lived in Herman Grimm, of which we may say that it came close to what we seek so eagerly in spiritual research. Herman Grimm provides evidence that, in approaching the -twentieth century, the modern human being sought paths to spiritual life.

So we turn gladly to Herman Grimm, wanting only to continue further on the same path. We see him elevate the creations of Raphael, the creations of Michelangelo, the experiences of Goethe, the Greek-soul of Homer, to the stream that he sees flowing onward as “creative phantasy” through millennia. We then know how close Herman Grimm was, in his entire feeling and perception, to what lives and weaves as the soul-spiritual behind all physical reality. For when Herman Grimm refers to his “creative phantasy” we are not dealing with total abstraction. In so far as it is still perhaps a matter of residual abstraction, to that extent it can seem necessary to break through the thin wall separating Herman Grimm from the living spirit, effective not only as creative phantasy, but living as immediate spirit_s effective behind the entire sense world. It could appear a form of unwarranted restraint, to say no.- more than Herman Grimm in speaking of the continual onward working of the phantasy of humanity. After all, as an artist, he touched so intimately on the still living soul that has gone through the portal of death. Hence, it will not be difficult for us, where Herman Grimm speaks of creative phantasy, to see the living spirit that, as spiritual researchers, we seek behind the sense world.

Perhaps it will not seem unjustified if it is even asserted that-, for a spirit that struggled so honestly and uprightly for truth—wanting to approach this creative phantasy ever and again—it was, after all, too much of an abstraction for him. It urged him to grasp the living spiritual element, and for that reason the great work he intended could not come about—since if it had been written, it would have had to become a work that portrayed the spiritual world not merely as creative phantasy, but as a world of creative beings and individualities.

Spiritual research has not been placed into the modern age arbitrarily. It is demanded by seeking souls of our time—seeking souls to whom, as we have seen, Herman Grimm.so-clearly and. characteristically belongs. In this way we can become aware that with spiritual research we do not stand as alien and isolated in modern cultural life. We have been able to look to Herman Grimm as to a related spirit. Even if he does not share the same standpoint completely, we do nonetheless stand—or can at least stand, immeasurably near to him. It is better to contemplate such a figure as a whole, rather than scrutinizing every detail—to look at the harmony of soul with which Herman Grimm can affect us, its mildness and then again keenness and strength of soul, with which he can likewise affect us. We may treat this or that question differently from Herman Grimm, but I know that it is not altogether out of keeping with his style, if I summarize what I actually wanted to say in the following words; One could arrive at the thought—let us call it for that matter a delusory thought, one that could be entertained as a beautiful illusion: If higher spirits, other-worldly spirits wanted to acquaint themselves prefer with what happens on the earth by means of reading, they would prefer most of all to read such writings as those in which Herman Grimm depicts the earthly destinies of human beings.

This feeling can reverberate as though from almost every line of Herman Grimm's writings, lifting one upwards to a sphere beyond the earth. One then feels so akin to this personality that, if one were to characterize what has been said today concerning Herman Grimm, a beautiful saying could come to mind that he himself employed in eulogizing his friend Treitschke [Heinrich von Treitschke, German historian, 1834-56] whom he valued so much.

“With what existential joy did this human being stand in life. What courage he showed in battle. What a gift lie had for language. How new his latest book. How little could those take exception to his ‘elbows’ in the general exchange of ideas. They too will join in declaring: ‘Yes, he was one of ours!’”

These words are at the same time the last words that Herman Grimm wrote and had printed, as we know from the publisher of his works, Reinhold Steig. And I should like also, in conclusion, to summarize this evening's considerations with the words: With what existential joy did Herman Grimm stand in life; how mild—and yet how individual! How little can even those distance themselves from him, if they but understand themselves aright, who differ from him in their ideas and in other ways! And, proceeding from whatever field of investigation, how closely allied to him must those feel who seek paths to the spirit! What kinship to him must they feel, when his mild figure appears before them—prompting them to break out in the words: Yes, he was one of ours!

Hermann Grimm, the eminent thinker on Art, has tried to follow Raphael's influence and fame through the ages down to the present day. Grimm has been able to show that Raphael's creations went on working after the painter's death as a living element, and that a uniform stream of spiritual development has flowed onwards from the life of Raphael to our own time. Grimm has shown how the evolution of humanity has proceeded since the creations of Raphael, and on the other side of the spiritual conception of history it may be said that preceding ages too give the impression as if they were themselves pointing to the Raphael who was later to appear in world evolution like a limb inset in a whole organism. We may here recall an utterance once made by Goethe and from the world of Space apply it to the world of Time. Goethe once wrote these significant words: “What would all the starry world and all that is spread out in Space amount to if it were not at some time reflected in a human soul, celebrating its own higher existence for the first time in the experiences of this human soul?” Applying these words to the evolution of the ages, we may say that in a certain sense, when we cast our eyes back into antiquity, the Homeric gods who were described so gloriously by Homer nearly 1000 years before the founding of Christianity, would seem less to us if they had not risen again in the soul of Raphael, finding their consummation in the sublime figures of his pictures. What Homer created long ages before the appearance of Christianity unites in this sense into an organic whole with what was born from the soul of Raphael in the 16th century. Again, we turn our gaze to the figures of the New Testament, and in the face of Raphael's pictures we feel that something would be lacking if the creative, formative power in the Madonnas and other pictures which have sprung from Biblical tradition and legend, had not been added to the Biblical description. Therefore we may say: not only does Raphael live on through the following centuries but his creations form one organic whole with all preceding ages. Most ages indeed already pointed to one in whom they should find their consummation, although this, it is true, could only be discovered in later history.

The words of Lessing when he speaks of “the Education of the Human Race” assume great significance when we thus see how a uniform spiritual essence flows through the evolution of humanity, flashing up in figures like Raphael. The truth of repeated earthly lives that has so often been emphasized from the spiritual-scientific standpoint in connection with the spiritual evolution of humanity is perceived with special vividness when we bear in mind what has just been said. We realize then for the first time what it means that the being of man should appear again and again in repeated earthly lives through the epochs, bearing from one life to the other what is destined to be implanted in the spiritual evolution of humanity. Spiritual Science is seeking the meaning and purpose in the evolution of mankind. It does not merely seek to portray the consecutive events of human evolution in one straight, continuous line, but to interpret the various epochs in such a way that the human soul, appearing again and again over the course of the ages, must have ever new experiences. Then we can truly speak of an “Education” which the human soul undergoes as the result of its different earthly lives,—an education proceeding from all that is created and born from out of the common spirit of humanity.

What will here be said from the standpoint of Spiritual Science in regard to Raphael's relationship to human evolution as a whole during the last few centuries, is not intended to be a philosophical or historical study, but the result of many-sided study of Raphael's creative activity. There is no question of giving a philosophical survey of the spiritual life of humanity for the sake of bringing Raphael into it. Everything that I myself have experienced after study and contemplation of his different works has crystallized quite naturally into what I propose to say tonight.

It will be impossible, of course, to enter in details into single creations of Raphael. That could only be if one were able by some means to place his pictures before the audience. A general impression of the creative power of Raphael arises in the soul and then the question arises: what place has this in the evolution of humanity? The gaze falls upon a significant epoch,—an epoch to which Raphael stands in inner relationship when we allow him to work upon us—I refer to the Greek epoch and its development. All that the Greeks not only created but experienced as the outcome of their whole nature and constitution appears as a kind of middle epoch when we study human evolution during the last few thousand years. Greek culture coincides in a certain sense with the founding of Christianity and all that preceded it seems to bear a different character from following ages. Studying humanity in the Pre-Grecian age of civilization we find that the soul and spirit of man are much more intimately bound up with the corporeal, with the outer corporeality than is the case in later times. What we speak of today as the “inwardness” of the human soul,—the inward withdrawal of the soul when applying itself to the spiritual or the spiritual becoming conscious of the Spiritual underlying the universe,—this inwardness did not exist to the same degree in Grecian times. When man made use of his bodily organs in those days, the spiritual mysteries of existence simultaneously lit up in his soul. Observation of the sense-world was not so detached and aloof as is ordinary Science to-day. Man beheld the objects with his senses, and with his sense impressions he simultaneously perceived the spirit and soul-elements weaving and living within the objects. The Spiritual was there with the objects as they were perceived. To press forward to the Spirituality of the universe in ancient times it was not necessary for man to withdraw from sense impressions or to give himself up wholly to the inner being of the soul. Indeed in very ancient times of evolution “clairvoyant perception of things”—in the very best sense of the word—was a common possession of man. This clairvoyant perception was not attained as the result of certain given conditions, but was as natural as sense perception.

Then came Greek culture with the world peculiar to it,—a world where we may place the beginning of the inward deepening of spiritual life, but where the inner experiences of the spirit are still connected with the outer, with processes in the world of sense. In Greek culture the balance is between the Sensible and the Psychic-Spiritual. The Spiritual was not so immediately present in sense perception as was the case in Pre-Grecian times. It lit up in the soul of the Greek as something inwardly apart, but that it was perceived when the senses were directed to the outer world. The Greek beheld the Spirit not in the objects, but with the objects. In Pre-Grecian times the soul of man was poured out, as it were, into corporeality. In Greek culture the soul had freed itself to some extent from the corporeality, but the balance between the Psychic-Spiritual and the bodily element was still held. This is why the creations of the Greeks seem to be as fully permeated with the spirituality as that which their senses perceived.

In Post-Grecian ages the human spirit undergoes an inward deepening and is no longer able to receive, simultaneously with the sense impression the, Spiritual living and weaving in all things. These are the ages when the human soul was destined to withdraw into itself and experience its struggles and conquests in an inner life before pressing forward to the Spiritual. Spiritual contemplation and the sense perception of things became two worlds which the human soul must experience. How clearly evident this is in a spirit like Augustine, for instance, who in the Post-Christian epoch is really not so far removed from the founding of Christianity as we are from the Reformation. The experiences and writings of Augustine as compared with the traditions of Greek culture are highly characteristic of the progress of humanity. The struggles of the inward turned soul, the scene of action existing in the inner being of the soul apart from the external world that we see in Augustine,—how impossible all this appears in the Greek spirits who everywhere reveal how deeply their soul-content is united with the processes of the external world.

The evolutionary history of humanity shows evidence of a division, a mighty incision. Into this evolutionary picture there enters on the one side Greek culture, where man holds the balance between the Psychic-Spiritual and outer corporeality; on the other side there is the founding of Christianity. All the experiences of the human soul were thereafter to become inward, to take their course in inner struggles and conquests. The mission of the founding of Christianity was not to direct man's gaze to the world of sense in order that he might become conscious of the riddles of existence, but to all that the spirit might intuitively behold when giving itself up wholly to the powers of the spirit and soul. How utterly different,—divided by a deep, deep cleft, are those beautiful, majestic Gods of Greece, Zeus or Apollo, from the figure dying on the Cross,—a figure, it is true, full of inner profundity and power, but not beautiful in the external sense. Already here we find the outer symbol of the deep incision made by Christianity and Greek culture in the evolution of humanity. And in the spirits of the Post-Grecian ages we see the effects of this incision as an ever more intense inward deepening of the soul.

Thence forward this inner deepening has been characteristic of the onward progress of evolution. And if we would understand human evolution in the sense of Spiritual Science we must realize that we are living in an age which represents a still greater inward deepening, the more we observe it in relation to the immediate past and the prospect of the future in which a cleft, still deeper than that which the contemplation of the past reveals, will appear between all that is proceeding in the world in a more or less mechanical, technical life of the outer world, and the goal ahead of the human soul as it endeavors to scale the heights of spiritual being,—heights which open up only in our inner being as we attempt to ascend to the Spiritual. More and more we are advancing into an age of inner deepening.

A mighty incision in the progress of humanity in Post-Grecian times toward an energy being is what has remained to us in the creations of Raphael. Raphael stands there as a mighty spirit at a parting of the ways in human evolution. All that preceded him marks the beginning of the process of this inner deepening; what follows him represents a new chapter. Although much that I have to say in this lecture may have the appearance of symbology, it should not be taken merely as a symbolical mode of expression, but as an attempt to create as broad a conception and idea as possible, that which can be clothed only in the “trivial concepts of man” on account of Raphael's towering greatness.

When we try to penetrate into the soul of Raphael we are struck, above all, by the way in which the soul appears in the year 1483 in a “spring-like” birth, as it were, passing through an inner development radiating forth its glory from the most marvellous creations. Raphael dies at an early age, at 37. In order so to deepen ourselves in this soul so that we can follow all its stages, let us turn our attention for the moment away from all that was going on in world history and concentrate wholly on the inner nature of this soul.

Hermann Grimm has pointed out certain regular cycles in the inner development of Raphael's soul. And indeed it may be said that Spiritual Science today has no need to be ashamed of directing the attention of modern skeptical mankind to the existence of cyclic laws holding sway along the path to the spirit, in all evolution andalso in that of individual human beings, if so eminent a mind as Hermann Grimm was led, without Spiritual Science, to the perception of this regular inner cyclic development in the soul of Raphael. Grimm speaks of the picture called “The Marriage of the Virgin” as being a new phenomena in the whole evolution of Art, saying that it cannot be compared with anything that had gone before. From infinite depths of the human soul, Raphael created something entirely new in the whole of spiritual evolution. If we thus gain a conception of the gifts lying in Raphael's soul from birth onwards, we can readily agree with the following passage of Hermann Grimm: “We now see Raphael's soul developing onwards in regular cycles of four years duration. It is wonderful to observe how this soul advances onwards thus, and studying one such period we find that at the end of it, Raphael stands at a higher stage of his soul's development. Four years after the picture The Marriage of the Virgin comes The Entombment; four years later again the frescoes in the Camera della Segnatura in the Vatican,—and so on, by four year stages up to The Transfiguration which stood unfinished by his death bed.”

We feel the desire to study this soul for its own sake because its development is so harmonious. Then however we get the impression that in the Art of Painting itself an inwardness had to develop,—an inwardness such as that expressed in figures which only Raphael could create. It is an inwardness borne out of the depths of the soul experience although it appears in pictures of the world of sense, and it then becomes part of history itself.

Having thus contemplated the inner nature of the soul of Raphael, let us allow the age in which he lived and all that was around him, to work upon us. While Raphael was growing up more or less as a child in Urbino, his environment was of a kind that could stimulate and awaken any decisive talents. The whole of Italy was excited at that time about a certain palace that had been built in Urbino. This was something that imbued the early talents of Raphael with an element of harmony with their nature. After that, however,we find him transplanted to Perugia, thence to Florence, thence to Rome. Fundamentally speaking, his life ran its course within narrow circles. These towns seem so near when we study his life. His world was enclosed within these circles so far as the world of sense was concerned. It was only in the spirit that he rose to “other spheres.” In Perugia, however, which was the scene of his youthful soul development, fierce quarrels were the order of the day. The town is populated by a passionate, tumultuous people. Noble families whose lives were spent in wrangling and quarreling fought bitterly against each other. The one drove the other out-of-town, then after a short banishment the other family would try again to take possession of it. More than once the streets of Perugia flowed with blood and were strewn with corpses. One historian describes a remarkable scene, and indeed all the descriptions of that epoch are typical. A nobleman of the town enters it as a warrior in order to avenge his relatives. He is described to us as he rides through the streets on horseback like the spirit of War incarnate, beating down everything that crosses his path. The historian evidently has the impression that the revenge was justifiable and there arises before his soul the picture of St. George bringing the enemy to his feet. Later on, in a work by Raphael, we feel the scene as described by the historian rise up before us in picture form and our immediate impression is that Raphael must surely have allowed this to affect him; and then what seemed so terrible in the outward sense is deepened and rises again from out of his soul in the subject of one of the most wonderful pictures.

Thus Raphael saw around him a quarreling humanity; disorder upon disorder, battle upon battle, surrounded him in the town where he was studying under his master Pietro Perugino. One gets the impression of two worlds in the town,—one, the scene of cruelty and terror, and another, living inwardly in Raphael's soul, which had really little to do with what was going on around him in the physical world.

Then, later again we find Raphael transplanted to Florence in the year 1504. What was the state of Florence then? In the first place the inhabitants give the impression of being a wearied people who had passed through inner and outer tumults and were living in a certain ennui and fatigue. What had been the fate of Florence? Struggles, just as in the case of the other town, bitter persecutions among different patrician families, and of course, quarrels with the outer world. And on the other hand the stirring event that had thrown every soul in the town into a state of upheaval when Savonarola, a short time previoulsy, had been martyred. This extraordinary figure of Savanarola appears before us uttering words of fire against the current misdeeds, the cruelty, materiality and heathendom of the Church. The words of Savonarola seem to resound again in our ears, words by which he dominated the whole of Florence and to such an extent that the people not only hung upon his lips but revered him as deeply as if a spirit from a higher world were standing before them in that ascetic body. The words of Savonarola transformed Florence as if the direct radiations of the Reformer of Religions Himself had permeated not only the religious conceptions, but the very social life of the town. It was as though a citadel of the Gods had been founded. Such was Florence under the influence of Savonarola. He fell a victim to those Powers whom he had opposed, morally and religiously. There rises before our soul the moving picture of Savonarola as he was led to the fire of martyrdom with his companions, and how from the gallows whence he was to fall onto the burning pyre, he turned his eyes—it was in May 1498—down to the people who had once hung upon his words, but who had now deserted him and were looking with apparent disloyalty at the figure who had for so long inspired them. Only in a very few,—and they were artists,—did the words of Savonarola still resound. There were painters at that time who themselves donned the monk's robe after Savonarola's martyrdom in order to work on in his Order under the influence of his spirit.

One can visualize the weary atmosphere lying over Florence, Raphael was transplanted into this atmosphere in the year 1504. And he brought with him in his creations the very Spirit's breath of Spring, although in a different way from Savonarola. When they contemplate the soul of Raphael in all its isolation,—a soul so different from the mood surrounding it in this town, visualizing him in the company of artists and painters working at his creations in lonely workshops in Florence or elsewhere, another picture rises up, showing us visibly in history how Raphael's soul stands out inwardly aloof from the outer life around it. And there arises before us the figures of the Roman Popes, Alexander VI, Julius II, Leo X, in fact the whole Papal system against which Savonarola directed his words of scorn, the Reformers their attacks. Yet this Papacy was the Patron of Raphael who entered its service, although inwardly his soul had little in common with what we find in his Patron Pope Julius II for instance. It was said of Julius II that he gave the impression of a man with a devil in his body, who always likes to show his teeth to his enemies.

How was this possible? We see the contrast between outer life and Raphael's inner being in the early student days in Perugia, but we see it's still more intensely in Rome where his all-conquering works were created in the midst of an officialdom of Cardinals and Priests which had been intolerable to Savonarola. True, the two men were different, but we must nevertheless contrast Raphael with his environment in this way if we are to obtain a true picture of what was living in his soul.

Let us allow the picture of Raphael to work upon us. This cannot be done in detail in a lecture, but we can at least call up before the mind's eye one of the more widely known works for the purpose of contemplating the peculiar qualities living in Raphael's soul,—I mean the Sistine Madonna which is familiar to everybody in the innumerable copies existing all over the world. The Sistine Madonna is one of the greatest and noblest works of Art in human evolution. The “Mother with the Child” hover towards us on clouds which cover the Earth globe,—hover from the shadowy world of spirit and soul, surrounded in clouds which seem naturally to form themselves into human figures, one being the Child Himself. Feelings arise which, when we permeate them with soul, seem to make us forget all those legendary conceptions which culminate in the picture of the Madonna. We forget all that Christian traditions has to tell of her. I say this not for the sake of giving any dry description, but in order to characterize as fully as may be the feelings that arise within us at the site of the Madonna.

Spiritual Science raises us above all materialistic conception of human evolution. Although it is difficult to understand in the sense of Natural Science according to which the development of lower organisms proceeded until finally it reached the stage of the human being,—nevertheless it is the fact that man is a being whose life transcends everything below him in the kingdom of Nature. Spiritual Science knows that man contains a something within him much more ancient than all the beings who stand in greater or lesser proximity to him in the kingdom of Nature.

Man existed before the beings of the animal, plant and even of the mineral kingdom. In a wider perspective we look back to ages when that which now constitutes our inner being was already in existence andwhich only later was incorporated into the kingdoms which now stand below man. We see the being of man proceeding from a super-earthly world and realize that we can only truly understand it when we rise above all that the Earth can produce out of herself to something super-terrestrial and pre-terrestrial. Spiritual Science teaches that even if we allow all the forces, all the living substances connected with the Earth herself to work upon us, none of this can give a true picture of the whole essence and being of man. The gaze must rise beyond the Earthly to the Supersensible whence the being of man proceeds. Speaking figuratively we cannot but feel how something wafts towards the Earthly when, for instance, we gaze at the golden gleaming morning sunrise,—and especially is this the case in a region like that in which Raphael lived. Forces which work down into the Earth seem here to flow into the Earthly elements,—forces which inhere in the being of the Sun. And then out of the golden radiance there rises before our soul the sense image of what it is that is wafting hither in order to unite itself with the Earthly.

Above all in Perugia we may feel that the eye is beholding the very same sunrise once seen by Raphael, who in these phenomena was able to sense the nature of the Super-Earthly element in man. And gazing at the Sun-illuminated clouds there may dawn on us a realization that the picture of the Madonna and Child is a sense picture of the eternal Super-Earthly element in man that is wafted to Earth from super-earthly realms themselves and meets, in the clouds, those elements that can only proceed from the Earthly. Our perception may feel itself raised to the loftiest spiritual heights if we can give ourselves up—not theoretically, or in an abstract sense, but with the whole soul—to what works upon us in Raphael's Madonnas. This perfectly natural feeling may arise before the world-famous picture in Dresden. And to prove to you that it has indeed had this effect upon many people I should like to quote words written about the Sistine Madonna by Karl August, Duke of Weimar, the friend of Goethe, after a visit to Dresden: He says:

“In regard to the Raphael picture that adorns the collection, I felt as if the whole day long I had roamed over the heights of the Gotthard, through the Urner cleft and looked down from thence to the green, blossoming valley. As I looked at the picture and again away from it, it always seemed to me a revelation of the soul. Even the most beautiful Correggios were pictures only of the human; the memory of them tangible like beautiful forms. Raphael, however, remained with me as a breath, as one of those revelations sent to one in women's form by the Gods to bring us happiness or sorrow, like a figure that arises before one again and again in waking or dream life, whose gaze, once experienced, is with one forever, day and night, moving the innermost being.” (Karl August to his friend Knebel, 14th October, 1763)

Another remarkable thing is that if we study the literature of those who speak of the experiences of deep emotion at the site of this Sistine Madonna and also of other pictures of Raphael, we shall always find that they use the analogy of the Sun, all that is radiant and spring-like.

This gives us a glimpse into Raphael's soul and we realize how from amid the environment already described, it held converse with the eternal mysteries of the genesis of man. And then we feel the uniqueness of this soul of Raphael, realizing that it is not a “product” of its environment, but points to a hoary antiquity. There is no longer any need for speculation. A soul like this, looking out into the wide universe,—a soul which does not express the mystery of existence in ideas, but senses and gives it form in a picture like the Sistine Madonna, stands there in its inner perfection quite naturally as mature in the highest degree. Truly, the gifts inherent in this soul represents something that must have passed through other epochs of human evolution, not many such epochs which poured into it a power able to reemerge in what we call the “life of Raphael”. But from what it re-merges?

We see the living content of Christian legends and traditions appearing again in Raphael's pictures in the midst of an age when Christendom had, as it were, become heathenised and was given up to outer pomp and show, just as Greek paganism was represented in the figures of its gods and honoured above all else by the Greeks in their intoxication with beauty. We see Raphael giving form to the figures of Christian tradition in an age when treasures of Greek culture which had for long centuries been buried under ruins and debris on Roman soil were unearthed, Raphael himself assisting. It is a remarkable spectacle, the Rome where Raphael found himself at this time. Let us consider what had gone before.

First there are the centuriesof the Rise of Rome,—a Rome built upon the Egoism of individual men whose aim it was above all to establish a human society in the external physical world on the foundation of what man, as the citizen of a State, was meant to signify. Then during the age of the Emperors, when Rome had reached a certain eminence, it absorbs the Greek culture which streams into Roman spiritual life. Rome subdues Greece in the political sense, but in the spiritual sense Greece conquers Rome. Greek culture lives on within Roman culture; Greek art, to the extent to which it has been imbibed by Rome, lives on there; Rome is permeated through and through by the essence of Greek culture.

But why is it that this does not remain through the following centuries as a characteristic quality of the development of Italy? Why was it that something entirely different made its appearance? It was because soon after Greek culture had streamed into the life of Rome there came the influx of that other element which impressed its signature strongly into the spiritual life that was developing on the soil of Italy, I mean, Christendom. The mission of this inward deepening of Christendom was not that of the external sense element in the Greek State, Greek sculpture, or Greek philosophy. A formless element was now to draw into the souls of men and to be laid hold of by dint of inner effort and struggle. Figures like Augustine appear,—men whose whole being is inward turned. But then,—since everything in evolution proceeds in cycles, we see arising in men who have passed through this inward deepening and whose souls have long lived apart from the beauties of external life, a yearning for beauty. Once again they behold the inner in the outer. It is significant to see the inwardly deepened life of Francis of Assisi in Giotto's pictures for those pictures express the inner experiences called forth in the soul by Christianity. And even if the inner being of the human soul speaks somewhat haltingly and imperfectly from Giotto's pictures, we do nevertheless see a direct ascent to the point where the most inward elements, the very loftiest and noblest in external form confronts us in Raphael and his contemporaries. Here we are directed once again to a characteristic quality of this soul of Raphael.

If we try to penetrate into the kind of feelings and perceptions which Raphael himself must have had, we cannot help saying to ourselves: “Yes, indeed, in the contemplation of pictures like the Madonna della Sedia, for instance, the whole way in which the Madonna with the Child, and the Child John in the foreground are here represented, makes us forget the rest of the world, forget above all that this Child in the arms of the Madonna is connected with the experiences of Golgotha. Gazing at Raphael's pictures we forget everything that afterwards proceeds as the “life of Jesus”; we live entirely in the moment here portrayed. We are gazing simply at a Mother with a Child, which in the words of Hermann Grimm, is the great Mystery to be met with in the outer world. Peace surrounds this moment; it seems as though nothing could connect with it, before or afterwards; we live wholly in the relationship of the Madonna to her Child and separate it off from everything else. Thus do the creations of Raphael appear to us,—perfect and complete in themselves, revealing the Eternal in one moment of Time.

How shall we describe the feelings of a soul able to create like this? We cannot compare them to the feelings of a Savonarola, who when he uttered his words of scorn or was speaking those uplifting, godly words to Christian devotees, was seized with inner fire and passed through the whole tragedy of the Christ. We cannot conceive that Raphael's soul burst forth suddenly like the genius of a Savonarola, or others like him; nor can we conceive that it was swayed by the so-called “fire of Christendom.” Raphael could not however have portrayed the Christian conceptions in such inner perfection if his soul had been as foreign to this “Christian fire” as may appear to have been the case.

On the other hand, the forms in all their objectivity and roundness could not have been created by a soul permeated with Savonarola's fire and winged by the experience of the whole tragedy of the Christ. Quite a different peace, quite a different Christian feeling must have flowed into the soul. And yet no soul could have created these pictures if the very essence of Christian inwardness were not living within it. Surely it is almost natural to say: here indeed is a soul which brought with it into the physical existence of the artist Raphael, the fire that pours forth from Savonarola. When we realize how Raphael brings this fire with him through birth from earlier experiences, we understand why it is so illuminating and inwardly perfect; it does not come forth as a consuming and shattering element but as the reliance of plastic creation. In Raphael's innate gifts one already feels the existence of something that in an earlier life might have been able to speak with the same fire that is later found in Savonarola. It need not astonish us to find in Raphael a soul reincarnated from an age when Christianity was not yet expressed in picture form or in Art, but from the age of its founding, the starting point of the whole mighty impulse which then worked on through the centuries.

In the attempt to understand the soul like Raphael's, it is perhaps not too bold to say something of this kind, for those who have steeped themselves again and again in the works of Raphael and have thus learnt to reverence this soul in all its depth, cannot but realize what it is that speaks from those wonder-works into which the artist poured his soul. Thus the mission of Raphael only appears in the right light when,—to use an expression of Goethe,—we seek in a life already past for the Christian fire that is revealed in the radiance of the Raphael life. Then we understand why his soul was necessarily so isolated in the world and why it was that having possessed to an intense degree in an earlier existence something of the nature of a Savonarola. It was able to refresh and renew all that had arisen in the spiritual evolution of Italy in the 16th century.

I have already described how in the age of the Rise of the Empire, the influence of Greek culture has entered into Roman development and how an inward deepening of the soul had set in. Later on, in the age of Raphael,—the Renaissance,—we see on the one side the reappearance of this old Greek culture that had long been buried under ruins and debris. We see in Rome with the remnants of this Greek culture, the reappearance of the Greek spirit that had once adorned and beautified the city; the eyes of the Roman people turn once again to the forms that had been created by this Greek spirit. On the other side, however, we see how the spirit of Plato, of Aristotle, of the Greek Tragedians, penetrates Roman life in the epoch. Once again the victory of Greek culture over the Roman world! The Greek culture which was emerging from ruins and debris and spreading over the Italian peninsula could not help having a refreshing and renewing effect on a spirit like Raphael's, who in an earlier existence was imbued, to the exclusion of everything else, with the moral-religious conception of Christendom.

If we see the moral-religious impulse of Christendom born in the gifts of Raphael, we also see that element which these gifts did not at first contain rising before his eyes in the resurrected culture of Greece. And just as the city, rising out of ruins and debris, influenced this soul more deeply than all others, so also did the spiritual yields of Greek culture that were unearthed in the hidden manuscripts. Raphael's inborn gifts, united with his “super-spiritual” devotion to everything of a cosmic nature, worked hand-in-hand with the Greek spirit that was emerging again in his age. These were the two elements that united in Raphael's soul; this is why his works express the inwardness proceeding from the post-Grecian age,—the inwardness poured by Christianity into the evolution of humanity which was expressed in outward manifestation in a world of artistic forms permeated with the purest Greek spirit.

We are faced, then, with the remarkable phenomenon of the resurrection of Greek culture within Christendom through Raphael. In him we see the resurrection of a Christendom in an age which in a certain respect represents the “Anti-Christian” element around him. In Raphael there lives a Christianity far transcending what had gone before him and rose to a much loftier conception of the world as it was at that time. Yet it was a Christianity that did not dimly and vaguely direct the attention to the infinite spheres of the Spiritual, but was concentrated into forms that delight the senses too, just as in earlier times the Greeks expressed in artistic forms their ideas of the gods united with the formless element living and weaving in the universe.

This is what we find when we try to form a general picture of Raphael, allowing one or another of his creations in all their sublime perfection yet marvellous superfluity of youth,—for Raphael died at the age of 37,—to work upon us. Not for the sake of any colorless theory, or for the purpose of building any kind of philosophical history, but as the result of a conception born out of Raphael's works themselves, it must be said that the law holding sway in the course of human spiritual life finds its true revelation in a mighty spirit such as his.

It is not correct to think of this course of spiritual life as a straight line where effect follows cause as a natural matter of fact. It is only too easy in this connection to quote one of the so-called “golden sayings” of humanity to the effect that the life and nature does not advance by leaps and bounds. Well and good, but the fact is that in a certain respect both life and nature do continually do so, as can be seen in the development of the plant from the green leaf to the blossom, from the blossom to the fruit. Here everything does indeed “develop” but sudden leaps are quite obvious.

So too is it in the spiritual life of humanity, and this, moreover, is bound up with many mysteries, one of them being that a later epoch must always have its support in an earlier. Just as the male and female must work in conjunction, so may it be said that the different “Spirits of the Age” must mutually fertilize and work together in order that evolution may proceed. Roman culture, already at the time of the empire, had to be fertilized by Greek culture in order that a new “Spirit of the Age” might arise. This new Spirit of the Age had in its turn to be fertilized by the Christ Impulse before the inwardness which we then find in Augustine and others was possible. This human soul that had been so inwardly deepened, had once again to be fertilized by the spirit of the Greek culture which, although it was doubly buried, doubly hidden, was made visible again to the eyes of man in the works of Art resting beneath the soil of Italy, and to their souls in the rediscovered literary manuscripts.

The first Christian centuries in Italy were extraordinarily uninfluenced by what lived in Greek Philosophy and Poetry. Greek culture was buried in a double grave and waited in a realm beyond as it were, for an epoch when it could once again fertilized human soul that had meantime passed through a new phase. It was buried, this Greek culture, hidden from the eyes of men and from souls who did not know that it would live and flow onwards like a river that sometimes takes a track under a mountain and is not seen until it once again comes to the surface. Hidden, outwardly from the senses, inwardly from the depths of the soul was this Greek culture and now it appeared once again. For sense perception it was brought to the light of day from out of the soil of Italy and flowed into the works of art; for spiritual perception it was not only unearthed from the ancient manuscripts; men began once again to feel in the Greek sense how the material is the manifestation of the Spiritual. They began to feel all that Plato and Aristotle had once thought.

It was Raphael in whom this Greek culture could bring forth its fairest flower because the Christ Impulse had reached a greater ripeness in his soul than in any other. This twice buried and twice resurrected Greek culture worked in him in such a way that he was able to impress into forms the whole evolution of humanity. How marvellously was he able to accomplish this in the pictures in the Camera della Segnatura in the Vatican! The ancient spiritual contests rise again before our eyes,—the struggles and activities of those Spirits who developed onwards during the epoch of inward deepening, who were not there in the Greek culture as it reappeared in the time of Raphael. The whole period of inward deepening was necessary before Greek culture could become visible in this particular form, and then it is painted on the walls of the Papal Chambers.

What the Greeks had conceived of in forms only, has now become inward; we see the inner struggles and conflicts of humanity itself charmed onto the walls of the Vatican in the spirit of Greece, of Greek Art and beauty. The Greeks poured into their statues their conception of the way in which the Gods worked upon the world. How this working of the Gods is experienced by man, so that he presses onwards to the foundations and causes of things,—this is what is expressed in the picture so often called “The School of Athens”. The conceptions which the human soul had learned to form of the Greek Gods is expressed in the Parnassus, with its new and significant interpretation of the Homeric gods. These are not the gods of the Iliad and Odyssey; they are the gods as perceived by a soul that had passed through the period of inward deepening.

On the other wall there is a picture that must remain indelibly in the memory of everyone, whatever their religious creed,—I refer to the fresco of the “Dispute about the Mass” which portrays the deepest inner truths. Whereas the other pictures,—in a Greek beauty of form it is true,—express the goal to be attained as the result of a certain philosophical striving, we have in the “Dispute about the Mass”, the fairest thing that the soul of man may experience. Here we find “Brahma”, “Vishnu”, “Shiva” portrayed in quite a different sense,—a proof to us that there is no need to adhere rigidly to a narrow Christian dogmatism. What can be inwardly experienced by every human soul, irrespective of creed or confession, as the “Trinity”, faces us in the symbolism,—though the portrayal is not merely “symbolical”, in the upper part of the picture. We see it again in the countenances of the Church Fathers, in their every gesture, in the whole grouping of the figures, in the wonderful coloring, indeed in the picture as a whole which portrays the inwardness of the human soul in a beauty of form permeated by the spirit of Greece.

And so the inward deepening experienced by the soul man in the course of 1500 years rises again in outer revelation. Christianity, not as the heathendom of the Roman popes and cardinals, but as the wonderful paganism of Greece with its mighty Gods, is resurrected in the works of Raphael.

Thus the soul of Raphael stands at the turning point of ages, pointing back to days of yore, containing within itself all that had developed up to the time of Christendom in the beauty of external revelation, and yet at the same time permeated by what had been brought about by the so-called “education of the human race”, namely an inward deepeningin the reincarnated soul. These wonderworks of so rare and art stand before us like a fusion of two ages, each clearly different from the other,—the pre-Grecian and the post-Grecian epochs, the one of external, the other of inner life. But the pictures also open up a glimpse into the future. Those who realize what the fusion of external beauty and the inner wisdom-filled urge of the human soul may signify, cannot but feel security and hope that this inward deepening—despite all the materiality that must develop more and more as humanity progresses,—must increase in the course of evolution and that the soul of man through successive lives will enter into greater and greater depths of inwardness.

If we now turn to literature and study not as “Art critics” or mere readers, the works of a spirit like Hermann Grimm, who tried with his whole soul to portray the workings of human fantasy, we can understand the depths of inner sympathy with which he contemplated the creations of Raphael. If we ourselves study a spirit like Hermann Grimm with this same inner sympathy, we can understand the significance of certain words of his which express what was passing through his soul when he makes a somewhat tentative utterance at the beginning of his books, in a passage dealing with the way in which Raphael is a product of all the ages. Grimm's formal descriptions of the various works of Raphael do not show us whence this particular thought has sprung. In the middle of other wider historical considerations into which Raphael is introduced, Hermann Grimm is struck by a thought which he records somewhat tentatively in these words: “When we contemplate the spiritual creations of humanity and see how they have passed over from days of yore into our own time, we may well be aware of a longing to tread this Earth once more in order to see what has been their fate as they have lived on.”

This desire for “reincarnation” expressed by Hermann Grimm in the introduction to his book on Raphael is remarkable, and moreover, deeply characteristic of the feeling living in the soul of a man of our own time,—I mean of course one who tried to penetrate into the very soul of Raphael and his connection with other epochs. Surely this makes us feel that works like those of Raphael are not merely a “natural product”; they do not only induce a sense of gratitude for all that the past has hitherto bestowed. They rather give birth to a feeling of hope, because they strengthen our belief in an advancing humanity. We feel that these works could not be what they are if progress were not the very essence of humanity. A feeling of security and hope arises when we allow Raphael to work upon us in the true sense and we are able to say: Raphael has spoken to humanity itself in his artistic creations.

In front of the Stanzas in the Camera della Segnatura we do indeed feel the transitoriness of the outer work and that those ofttimes repaired frescoes can no longer give any conception of what Raphael's magic once charmed on those walls. We realize that at some future time men will no longer be able to gaze at the original works, but we know too that humanity will never cease progressing. Raphael's works began their march of triumph when out of sheer love of them the innumerable reproductions now in existence were made. The influence of the originals live on, even in the reproductions. We can so well understand Hermann Grimm when he says that he once hung a photograph of the Sistine Madonna in his room but always felt that he had no right to go into that room; it seemed to him to be a sanctuary of the Madonna in the picture. Many will have realized that the soul is changed after they have entered livingly into some picture of Raphael, even though it is only a reproduction. True one day the originals will disappear, but may it not be said that they exist nonetheless in other worlds?

The words of Hermann Grimm in his book on Homer are quite true: “Neither can the original works of Homer truly delight us in these days for when we read the Iliad and Odyssey in ordinary life without higher spiritual faculties, we are no longer able to enter fully into all the subtleties, beauty and power of the Greek language. The originals exist no longer; yet in spite of this Homer speaks to us through his poems.” What Raphael has given to the outer world however will always remain as a living witness of the fact that there was once an age in the evolution of humanity when the mysteries of existence were indeed revealed through mighty creations, although at that time men could not penetrate into these mysteries through printed writing. In the age of Raphael men read less, but they beheld a great deal more.

Raphael's eternal message to humanity will bear witness to this epoch,—an epoch differently constituted but that will nevertheless work on through all the ages to come, because humanity is one complete organism. Thus Raphael's creations will live on in the outer course of human evolution and inwardly in the successive lives of the spirit of man, bestowing ever mightier and more deeply inward treasures.

Spiritual Science points to a twofold continuation of life, one aspect of which has been described in previous lectures here, and will be still further described, and to another spiritual life towards which we are ever striving. This spiritual life becomes our guide as we pass through the epochs of earthly existence. Hermann Grimm spoke words of truth when he expressed what his study of Raphael imparted to his feeling and perception. He says: “A time must come when Raphael's work will have long since faded and passed away. Nonetheless he will still be living in mankind, for in him humanity blossomed forth into something that has its very roots in man and will forever germinate and bear fruit.” Every human soul who can penetrate deeply enough into Raphael's soul will realize this. Indeed we can only truly understand Raphael when we can sublimate and deepen in the sense of Spiritual Science a feeling which permeated Hermann Grimm when he turned again and again to the contemplation of the painter. (In the last lecture we saw how near Hermann Grimm stood to Spiritual Science.) It will help us to understand our own relation to Raphael and the sense in which thoughts such as have been given today may grow into seeds. If we conclude with a passage from Grimm which expresses what I have really wished to say: “Men will always long to understand Raphael, the fair young painter who surpassed all others, who was fated to die early and whose death was mourned by all Rome. When Raphael's works are lost his name will nevertheless remain engraven in the memory of man.”

Thus wrote Hermann Grimm went in his own particular way he began to describe Raphael. We can understand these words and also those with which he concludes his book: “All the world will long to know of the life work of such a man for Raphael has become one of the basic elements in the higher development of the human spirit. We would fain draw nearer to him nay, we need him for our healing.”

Raphael belongs to those figures in mankind's spiritual history that appear all at once, like a star, who are simply there, so that one has the feeling, they arise quite suddenly from indeterminate substrata of humanity's spiritual development—disappearing again after deeply impressing their being upon this spiritual history. Closer observation reveals that such individualities, of whom one had at first assumed, they light up like a star and disappear again, actually incorporate themselves into cultural life as a whole, as into a great organism. One has this feeling quite especially with Raphael.

Herman Grimm¹, the eminent art historian, of whom I was able to speak here last time, attempted to trace Raphael's influence, his renown, through the times that follow Raphael's own age, up to our own day. He was able to show that Raphael's creations worked on after his death like a living, unified stream of spiritual development that continues beyond his death, reaching to the present. If Herman Grimm was able to show this, one would like to say on the other hand: The preceding age leaves us with the impression that it already points in a certain respect to Raphael's later entry into world evolution, just as a limb is an integral part of an organism.

In calling to mind a saying of Goethe's, one would like to transpose it, as it were, from the realm of space to the realm of time. Goethe once made the following significant utterance: “How can the human being relate himself to the infinite, other than by gathering together all his spiritual forces, drawn from many directions, asking himself: Is it permissible to think of yourself as the centre of this eternally existing universal order, when it leads at the same time to a persistent circling around an absolute mid-point?”²

In applying this saying to temporal evolution, one would like to add: in a certain respect the gods of Homer, described by him in such a grandiose manner almost a thousand years before the founding of Christianity, would lose something for us, in looking back into pre-historic times, if we were not able to see them as they re-emerged in the soul of Raphael. Only there do they attain a certain completion in the powerful visual expression of Raphael's creations. Thus, what Homer brought forth long before the advent of Christianity joins itself for us to an organic whole through what arose from Raphael's soul in the sixteenth century.

And, by the same token, if we direct our gaze to the biblical figures of which the New Testament tells us and then contemplate the works of Raphael, we have the sense that something would at once be lacking for us if the creative power in Raphael's Madonnas and similar pictures, arising from biblical tradition and legends, had not been added to the descriptions of the Bible. One would like to say, Raphael not only lives on in the centuries that follow him; what preceded him joins with his own creative activity to form an organic whole—even if this becomes evident only from a later historical viewpoint.

Thus, an expression that Lessing³ made use of in an important connection, in referring to “the education of the human race,” appears in a special light. We see how a uniform spiritual element flows through humanity's development and how this shines forth quite especially in such outstanding figures as Raphael. What we have often been able to emphasize from a spiritual scientific standpoint in regard to the development of humanity—concerning the repeated earth-lives of the human being—takes on further significance in contemplating what has been said. We become aware of the significance of the fact that the human spirit appears again and again in repeated earth-lives throughout the various epochs of humanity, bearing from one age to another what is to be implanted in mankind's spiritual development. Spiritual science seeks meaning and significance in human evolution. It does not want merely to present what happens sequentially in an ongoing straight line of development, but rather to assign an overall meaning to single periods. In appearing again and again in earth-lives that follow each other, the human soul comes onto this earth so as to be able to experience something new each time. Thus, we can really speak of an education the human soul undergoes in passing through various earth-lives; an education by means of all that is cultivated and achieved by the common spirit of humanity.

What is put forward here from a spiritual scientific standpoint concerning Raphael's relation to the general development of humanity over the last centuries is not meant as a philosophical, historical construct. It arises rather as a natural outcome of considering Raphael's creative activity from all manner of viewpoints. These reflections are not the result of an urge to elaborate on humanity's spiritual life philosophically. What is said has arisen for me after contemplating Raphael's creations from many points of view—crystallizing quite naturally into what I wish to present. However, it will not be possible to enter into particular works of Raphael as such, since this would require showing such works at the same time. But the total works of Raphael also coalesce in feeling to an overall impression. Having studied Raphael, one bears something of a total impression in one's soul. And then one may ask: How does it stand with this overall impression as regards the development of humanity?

Our attention is necessarily drawn to an important age with which Raphael is intimately connected, the age that coincides with the development of the ancient Greek culture. What the Greeks attained and what they experienced out of their inherent nature presents itself as a kind of middle epoch in the development of humanity. What precedes Greek culture, which is concurrent in a certain respect with the founding of Christianity, presents a quite different aspect from what follows it. If we consider the human being in the time prior to Greek culture, we find that the soul and spirit were much more intimately connected with the external bodily nature than was the case in subsequent periods. What we may call the “internalizing” of the human soul, the withdrawal of the human soul in turning to the spirit, in wanting to contemplate what underlies the spiritual in the world—this did not exist in the same measure as it does today for the times preceding the Greek period. For human beings of that earlier time it was rather that in making use of their bodily organs, the spiritual secrets of existence illuminated their souls simultaneously. A detached view of the sense world, such as we find in today's conventional science, did not exist in those older times. The human being beheld objects with his senses, sensing at the same time, in having the impression before him, what lives and weaves in things of a soul-spiritual nature. The spiritual resulted for human beings from the things themselves, from making use of their sense organs. A withdrawal from sense impressions, in giving oneself over to inner experience, so as to arrive at the spiritual in the world, was not necessary in older times.

If we go very far back in the development of humanity, we find that what may be called, in the best sense of the word, “clairvoyant contemplation of things,” was a general property of the humanity of primeval times. This clairvoyant contemplation was not attained in separate states but was simply there and as natural as sense perception. Then came Greek civilization with its own characteristic world of which it can be said that, though the internalizing of spiritual life begins here, what the spirit experiences inwardly is still seen in connection with what goes on externally in the sense world. In Greece the sensory and the psycho-spiritual hold each other in balance. The spiritual was no longer given in such an immediate fashion together with sense perception as in the time preceding Greece. The spiritual welled up as it were in the Greek soul as something inwardly separate, but as something felt in directing the senses out into the world. The human being became aware of the spiritual, not in the things of the external world, but in connection with them. In the time preceding Greece, the human soul was poured, as it were, into the bodily nature. It had freed itself from the bodily nature to some extent in Greece, but the soul-spiritual held the bodily nature in balance throughout the time of ancient Greece. For that reason, the creations of the Greeks appear as fully permeated with spirituality as what presented itself to their senses.—Then came the times that followed Greece, times in which the human spirit internalizes—in which it was no longer granted it to receive the spiritual element that lives and weaves in things along with sense impressions. These are times in which the human soul had to withdraw into itself and experience its own forces through conscious effort, in advancing to the spiritual. The human soul had to experience spiritual contemplation of things and sensory observation as, so to speak, two worlds.

What has just been said becomes fully evident in considering a spirit such as St. Augustine,⁴ who is barely separated farther in time from the advent of Christianity than we are from the Reformation. Humanity's progress becomes apparent in comparing what St. Augustine experienced and set forth in his writings, with what has come down to us from the Greek world. What St. Augustine expounds in his Confessions, what he shows us of the soul battles in turning inward, what he reveals of an inner being altogether withdrawn from the external world—how impossible does this seem with regard to the spirits of ancient Greece! There we see everywhere how what lives in the soul unites with what happens in the external world.

The historical development of humanity shows itself divided as though by a mighty incision. On the one hand we have the culture of ancient Greece in which humanity holds the balance with respect to the soul-spiritual and the external physical. On the other hand, we have the founding of Christianity, that proceeds from everything the human being experiences inwardly, by means of inner battles and conscious effort—turning not to the outer world in sensing the riddles of existence, but to what the spirit can ascertain when giving itself over to purely soul-spiritual forces. Altogether different are those beautiful, those majestic and so perfect Greek gods, Zeus and Apollo, as though separated by a deep chasm from the Crucified One, from inner depth and power, undistinguished by external beauty. This is already the outer symbol for the profound turning point represented by Christianity and the culture of ancient Greece in the development of humanity. We see this turning point in the spirits that follow the Greek period, taking effect as an ever greater internalizing of the soul.

The inner deepening that took place in this way is characteristic of the further development of humanity.—If one would comprehend the development of humanity, one has to become clear in one's mind that we are living in an age which implies a progressive internalization in the sense of what has been said—whether we view it in terms of the immediate past, or in looking to the future. Thus, we can foresee a time in which a still greater chasm will loom between everything that goes on in the external world, what happens in the more or less mechanical life of the outer world, and what the human soul aspires to in wanting to ascend to an understanding of spiritual heights—in attempting to take the inner steps that lead to the spiritual. We are advancing more and more toward an age of further internalization. A significant turning point in regard to this progress of humanity toward inwardness since ancient Greek times is what has come down to us in Raphael's creations.

As a quite unusual spirit, Raphael places himself as though at a watershed of mankind's development. What precedes him is in a quite special sense the beginning of the turn toward inwardness. And what follows him presents a new chapter in this internalization of the human soul. Some of what I have to say in today's presentation may sound like a kind of symbolic reflection. But it should not be taken as a mere symbolic mode of expression. On account of Raphael's towering greatness, the attempt here is to grasp what can otherwise only be clothed in trivial concepts, as far as possible in broader concepts and ideas.

Attempting a glance into Raphael's inner being, it strikes us above all how, in the year 1483, this soul appears as a veritable “spring-time birth,” undergoing an inner development and evolving brilliant creations. And when Raphael subsequently dies at thirty-seven, he is still young. So as to immerse ourselves in Raphael, in following the various stages of his development, let us turn our attention for the moment from historical events to Raphael's inner nature.

Herman Grimm has pointed out certain regular intervals in Raphael's development. Indeed, spiritual science has no need to be ashamed, in the face of disbelieving humanity, in pointing to certain cyclical laws, laws of a regular spiritual path, also of individuals, since a thinker of the calibre of Herman Grimm—without spiritual science—was led to recognize a regular cyclical development in Raphael. Herman Grimm refers to a work of Raphael that especially delights us in Milan, the Marriage of the Virgin, as a completely new phenomenon in the whole of art history, that cannot be set alongside any previous work. Thus, out of indeterminate depths, Raphael brought forth something that distinguishes itself as being entirely new in spiritual evolution.

Noting in this way what, from birth on, was a predisposition in Raphael, taking account of his progression, we can sense with Herman Grimm how he enters upon certain four-year periods. It is remarkable how Raphael advances in cycles of four years. And if we contemplate such a four-year period, we see Raphael at a higher level each time. About four years after the Marriage of the Virgin he painted The Entombment four years later the frescoes of the Camera della Segnatura and so on, in stages of four years, until the work that stood unfinished next to his deathbed, the Transfiguration of Christ.

Since everything in regard to Raphael's nature proceeds so harmoniously, we feel the need to consider it purely for itself. One then gains the impression that in the age of Raphael a quality of inwardness had to arise, quite especially in regard to the art of painting—an inwardness that had to realize itself in figures such as Raphael alone was able to bring about, born of profound soul experiences, though manifesting in sensory images. And does this not then in fact become part of history itself?

Having thus considered Raphael's inner nature, let us turn to the times and the surroundings into which he was placed. There we find that, while still a child growing up in Urbino, Raphael found himself in an environment that could have a stimulating and awakening effect on his decisive talents. A palace building had arisen in Urbino that aroused excitement throughout Italy. It could be said to have contributed to Raphael's initial harmonious disposition. However, we then see him transplanted to Perugia, to Florence and then to Rome. Basically, Raphael's life unfolded within a narrow circle. In viewing his life, how close in proximity do these places lie for us today. Raphael's entire world was circumscribed within a relatively narrow region, so far as the sense world was concerned. Only in spirit did he raise himself to other spheres.

In Perugia, where Raphael underwent his youthful development, bloody battles were the order of the day. The city was populated by a passionately aroused citizenry; noble families that lived in strife and discord, waged war on each other. One faction drove the other from the city. After a brief expulsion, the others attempted to seize the city again. And not a few times, the streets of Perugia were covered in blood and strewn with corpses. A history writer⁵ describes a peculiar scene, as do other reports of that time that are indeed quite odd. In lively fashion, we see a member of the city's nobility emerge, who, to avenge his relatives, storms into the city as a warrior. The writer describes how he rides on horseback through the streets, the embodiment of the spirit of war, massacring all in his way. But the description is such that the writer clearly had the impression: it is a matter of a justified vengeance being taken by the nobleman. The image in the historian's mind is of a warrior subjugating the enemy beneath his feet. In one of Raphael's pictures, the St. George, we can sense this image the chronicler indicates. We have the immediate impression, it could not be otherwise than that Raphael let this scene work on him. What must appear outwardly so frightful for us, resurrects inwardly in Raphael's soul and becomes the starting point for one of the greatest and most significant pictures in the development of humanity.

Thus, Raphael witnessed a quarrelling, battling population around him. Confusion and chaos, war and strife reigned all around him in the city in which he pursued his apprenticeship with his first teacher, Pietro Perugino. We have the impression that two distinct worlds coexisted in the city: The one in which cruel and horrible things occurred, and another that lived inwardly in Raphael, having little to do with what went on around him.

Then in the year 1504 we again see Raphael transplanted, now to Florence. How did matters stand with Florence when Raphael entered the city? First of all, by their conduct the inhabitants made the impression of being tired people, having undergone inner and outer states of agitation, of satiation and fatigue.—What all had not befallen Florence! Internal battles as in Perugia, bloody vendettas among patrician families, as well as battles with outside forces. But, roiling every soul in the city, there had also been the incisive experience of Savonarola⁶ who had died a martyr's death not long before Raphael arrived in the city. We have the strange figure of Savonarola of the fiery tongue, lashing out against the deplorable state of affairs, the acts of cruelty on the part of the Church, against secularization, against the paganism of the Church. The stormy words of Savonarola reverberate in us if we give ourselves over to them; words with which he captivated all of Florence, so that people not only hung on every word, but worshipped him as though a higher spirit stood before them in that ascetic body.

As a kind of religious reformer Savonarola had transformed the city of Florence. His preachings pervaded not only religious ideas, but the entire city-state. Florence stood wholly under the influence of Savonarola, as though a divine republic of some sort were to be founded. And we then see Savonarola fall prey to the powers he had spoken out against, morally and religiously. The moving scene arises of Savonarola being led with his companions to the martyr's pyre. From the gallows he turned to look down upon the people gathered there, who had for so long been enthralled by him, having once hung on his every word. This was in May of the year 1498. Having now forsaken him, they viewed him as a heretic. However, in a few among them, including artists, the words of Savonarola still echoed on. After Savonarola had suffered a martyr's death, a painter of that time assumed the monk's habit, so as to continue working in his spirit, in his order.⁷

It is not difficult to imagine the tired atmosphere that lay over Florence. We see Raphael transposed into this atmosphere in the year 1504—bringing, with his creative activity, the spirit's “breath of spring” that introduced into the city a spiritual fire, so to speak, though of a quite different kind from what Savonarola had been capable of. Taking account of the contrast between the mood of this city and Raphael's soul in its isolation (joining other artists and painters working in solitary workshops or elsewhere in Florence) a picture emerges that once again shows how Raphael stood inwardly apart from the external circumstances in which he found himself. We see the Roman popes, Alexander VI, Julius II, Leo X and the whole papal system that Savonarola had railed against and the reformers had opposed. But it transpires that in this papal system we have at the same time Raphael's patrons. We see Raphael in the service of this papacy. Inwardly, his soul has in truth little in common with what meets us, for example, in his patron Julius II. The latter admitted to appearing to people as someone who “had the devil within him,” and generally had the impulse to bare his teeth in confronting his enemies.

Nominally great figures, these popes were certainly not what Savonarola or his like-minded comrades would have called Christians. The papacy had passed over into heathenism, not in the old, but in a new sense. There was not much trace of Christian piety in these circles, though certainly of the desire for splendour and lust for power. Raphael becomes the servant of this heathenized Christendom. But such that something is created out of his soul by which the Christian ideas appear in many respects in a new form. We see the most heartfelt, the most delightful content of the world of Christian legends arise in the Madonna pictures and other works of Raphael. What a stark contrast there is between the inwardness of soul in Raphael's works and all that went on around him in Rome, when he became the outer servant of the popes. How was all this possible? Already, with his apprenticeship in Perugia, and then his time in Florence, we see how disparate were the actual circumstances and Raphael's inner nature. This was quite especially the case in Rome, where he created pictures of worldwide renown. Yet Raphael and his surroundings have to be taken into account if we are to acquire a proper idea of what lived within him.

Let us allow the pictures of Raphael to work upon us. For the moment, this cannot be done with individual pictures, though one of his best-known paintings may be singled out, so as to come to an understanding of the characteristic soul quality in Raphael. It is the Sistine Madonna in nearby Dresden, which almost everyone knows from the numerous reproductions found throughout the world. This shows itself to be one of the noblest, most magnificent works of art in the history of mankind. We see the Mother and Child float toward us over the clouds that cover the globe—out of an indeterminate realm of the spiritual-supersensible—enveloped and surrounded by clouds that seem naturally to take on human form. One of them as though condenses to become the Child of the Madonna. She calls forth a quite particular feeling in us. In permeating us inwardly, this enables us to forget all legendary ideas from which the image of the Madonna derives, as well as all Christian traditions that tell of the Madonna.

I should like to characterize, not in a dull manner, but as large-heartedly as possible what we are able to feel in regard to the Madonna. In considering human evolution in the sense of spiritual science we transcend the materialistic view. According to the natural scientific view, the lower creatures evolved first, ascending as far as the human being. However, from the standpoint of spiritual science we have to see the human being as having an existence over and above the lower kingdoms of nature. With the human being we have, in spiritual scientific terms, what is much older than all the creatures that stand in relative proximity to him in the kingdoms of nature.

For spiritual science the human being existed before the animal, the plant or even the mineral kingdom came into being. We look back into far distant perspectives of time in which what is now our innermost nature was already there, only later to unite itself with the kingdoms that stand below the human being. Thus, we see the essential being of Man descend, that in truth can only be comprehended in raising ourselves to the supersensible, to what is pre-earthly. By means of spiritual science we come to recognize that no adequate conception of the human being is to be gained from forces connected only with the earth. We must raise ourselves to super-terrestrial regions to see the approach of the human being. To speak metaphorically, we must feel how something floats toward the earthly—in turning our gaze, for instance, to the sunrise in a region such as that in which Raphael lived, to the gold-gleaming sunrise. There, even in natural existence, we can come to feel how something must be added to what is earthly, of forces that we can connect with the sun. Then there arises for us, out of the golden lustre, the symbol of what floats down in order to take on the vesture of the earthly.

In Perugia quite especially, one can have the sense that the eye beholds the same sunrise seen by Raphael and that the natural phenomenon of the rising sun grants us a feeling of what is celestial in the human being. Out of the clouds shone through by the sun-gold there can arise for us—or it can at least appear so—the image of the Madonna and Child as a symbol of the eternally celestial in the human being, that wafts down to the earth out of the extraterrestrial. And below, separated by clouds, we have everything that only proceeds from the earthly. Our feeling-perception can rise to the most exalted spiritual heights, if—not theoretically and not abstractly but with our whole soul—we abandon ourselves to what affects us in Raphael's Madonna. It is a quite natural feeling one can have in regard to the world-famous picture in Dresden. And I should like to provide an example showing how it has had such an effect on some people, in quoting words written by Goethe's friend, Karl August, Duke of Weimar, concerning the ,i>Sistine Madonna, following a visit to Dresden:

With the Raphael adorning the collection there, it was for me as when, having climbed the heights of the Gotthard all day and traversed the Urseler Loch, one all of a sudden looks down on the blossoming, green valley below. As often as I saw it and looked away again, it always appeared only like an apparition. To me, even the most beautiful Corregios were only human pictures; in memory, their beautiful forms palpable to the senses.—Raphael, however, remained always like a mere breath, like one of those appearances the gods send us in female form, in our happiness or sorrow; like pictures that present themselves to us again in sleep, upon awakening or in dreaming, and having once seen, appear to us day and night ever afterwards, moving us in our inmost soul.⁸

And it is remarkable, what is to be found in following up the literature of those able to express something of a profound nature in viewing the Sistine Madonna, as also other Raphael pictures. Again and again we find comparisons with light, with the sun, with what is luminous and what is spring-like in nature.

This affords us a glimpse into Raphael's soul. We see how, despite the conditions that prevailed around him, he holds converse with the eternal secrets of human development. We sense that, in his uniqueness, Raphael does not grow out of his surroundings, but points to a tremendous past. One does not then need to speculate. Such a soul looks out into the world's circumference and does not express the secrets of existence in ideas, but forms them into a picture. By virtue of its inner completeness such a soul is self-evidently mature in the highest degree and truly bears special forces of humanity in its whole disposition,—one that must have gone through epochs that poured tremendous things into the soul, so as to reappear in what we call the life of Raphael. How, we may ask, does this re-emerge?

We see the living content of Christian legends, of Christian traditions, arise in Raphael's pictures at a time in which Christianity had become pagan and given over to external pomp and outer splendour. Greek paganism was represented in its gods and venerated by the Greeks in their intoxication with beauty. We see Raphael giving form to the figures of Christian tradition in an age in which Greek treasures that had been buried for centuries under rubble and debris on Roman soil were being dug up again. We see Raphael among those excavating. Indeed, this Rome into which Raphael was transposed makes a remarkable impression.

What precedes this time? We see, first of all, the centuries in which Rome emerges, built on the egoism of individuals whose aim is to found a community in the external world based on what the human being signifies as the citizen of a state. When Rome had attained a certain height with the time of the Caesars, we see it absorb the Greek element into its spiritual life. We see Rome, though it had overwhelmed Greece politically, now overcome by Greece spirituality. Thus, the Greek element lived on in Rome. Greek art, to the extent it was absorbed by Rome lives on in what is Roman. Rome becomes permeated through and through by the Greek element.

But why does this Greek element not remain a characteristic feature of Italy's development over the following centuries? Why did something altogether different in fact make its appearance? Because, not long after this Greek element had poured itself into the Roman world, something else came, impressing its signature more strongly on what had developed on the soil of Italy: Christianity, the internalizing of Christianity. Something was now to speak to humanity, not as had the external sensory element of Greek cities, of Greek works of art, or Greek philosophy, but by addressing itself to the inner human being, taking hold of this human soul in inner battles. Hence, we see such figures arise as St. Augustine, personalities of a quite inward disposition.

But then, since all development runs its course cyclically, we again see a yearning for beauty arise, after human beings had undergone this internalizing and had lived for a long time without the same connection to external beauty. In the “outer” we once again see what is inward. In this regard, it is of significance when in Assisi the inwardly deepened life of Francis of Assisi. Francis of Assisi appears in the works of Giotto, in which Christianity is able to speak directly to the human soul.—Even if we sense at the same time—the expression is permissible—something awkward and imperfect in Giotto's pictures, in bringing the inner nature of the human being to expression. We nonetheless have a direct line of ascent to the point where the most inward, the most impressive and noblest becomes manifest in outer form in Raphael and his contemporaries.

Entering in feeling into the way in which Raphael himself must have felt, we have to say to ourselves: In looking at a picture such as the Madonna della Sedia it strikes us, in contemplating the Madonna with the Child, along with the Child John, that we forget the rest of the world—forget above all that this Child held by the Madonna could be linked with what we know as the Golgotha experience. With Raphael's picture we forget everything that followed as the life of Christ-Jesus. We give ourselves over entirely to the moment seen here. We have simply a Mother and Child, of which Herman Grimm said, it is the most exalted mystery to be met with in the outer world. We view the moment in serenity, as though nothing could connect onto it, either before or after. We are wholly taken up by the relationship of the Madonna and Child, separated from everything else. Thus, in always showing us the eternal in a given moment, Raphael's creations appear fundamentally complete in themselves.

What must a soul feel in creating in this manner? It cannot be seized inwardly by the burning fervour of Savonarola that feels the whole Christ tragedy within itself, in speaking its words of fury, or in addressing its hearers in uplifting, pious words. We cannot imagine that Raphael could have anything to do with Savonarola's spiritual orientation; or that so-called Christian fire could have held sway in Raphael. Nevertheless, we should not think that the Christian ideas could appear to us so vividly through Raphael—a human soul of such inwardness and completeness—if Christian fire had been altogether foreign to it.

One cannot create figures in an objective and well-rounded fashion if one is imbued with Savonarola's fire, borne along by the whole tragic mood of Christ, feeling oneself spurred on by this. A certain tranquillity and quite different Christian feelings must first have arisen in the soul. Even so, what has come to expression in Raphael's pictures could not have arisen if the very “nerve” of Christian inwardness had not lived in him. Is it not then reasonable to suppose: In the painter Raphael we have a soul that must already have brought that fire with it into physical existence that we perceive at work in Savonarola. If we see Raphael as bringing this fire along with him from earlier earth-lives, then we comprehend how he could be so inwardly serene, so inwardly complete, that this fire does not meet us as a consuming fire, destructive of enthusiasm, but as the tranquil element of creative activity. At his point I should like to say, one senses something in Raphael's natural abilities by means of which, in an earlier life, he could have spoken with the same fire as Savonarola. And it need not astonish us if Raphael's soul were to have re-arisen from a time in which Christianity was not yet present in the form of art, but received that mighty impulse at its immediate inception by which it became effective in the course of the centuries that followed.

Perhaps it is not too audacious, in attempting to understand Raphael, to put forward something like what has been said. For, whoever has learned, in immersing himself again and again in Raphael's works, to revere this individual in all its depths, to view it in its unfathomableness, is only able by means of such extended feelings to comprehend what speaks to us out of the miraculous works into which Raphael poured his soul.

Raphael's mission only appears to us in the right light when we seek, in the sense of Goethe's expression, “in a completed life” [in einem abgelebten Leben], the Christian fire that later manifests as serenity in Raphael. Then we come to understand why he had to place himself into the world in such an isolated manner. And we comprehend how the Raphael we have attempted to characterize—having experienced something “Savonarola-like” in an earlier life (only in an enhanced measure)—now became the Raphael we know from Renaissance Italy.

As already mentioned, in the time in which the Roman Empire drew near, in the Roman period of Greece, an internalizing of the soul had taken place. In the Renaissance, in Raphael's time, we see the ancient Greek culture, buried under rubble, reappearing. Rome was gradually filled with relics of Greece, with what had once beautified the city. The Roman population directed its attention once again to the forms the Greek spirit had created. In this period, we also see how the spirit of Plato, the spirit of Aristotle, the spirit of the Greek tragedians infuses Roman life. We see the Roman world conquered once again by Greek culture. For a spirit that had previously given itself over to the moral-religious view of Christianity, devoting itself in a prior life completely to such moral-religious impressions, Greek culture may be said to have had a renewing, fructifying effect, in appearing out of the rubble and ruins on the Italian peninsula.

Thus, if we see the moral-religious impulse of Christianity as integral to Raphael's innate faculties, what was not there in his disposition appeared in the Greek artefacts then being excavated before his eyes. The statues reappearing out of the rubble, products of the Greek spirit, the manuscripts that were recovered, had their effect on Raphael's soul as on no other. What united itself in this way as a result of his inner disposition—Christian feeling, combined with an especially spiritual devotion to what is cosmic—all this worked together with what was then re-emerging of the Greek spirit. These two things united in Raphael's soul, bringing it about that in his works we have what the time following Greece had generated—the inwardness with which Christianity had imbued the development of humanity—now finally brought to full expression in a world of forms, of pictures in which the purest Greek spirit speaks to us.

We see the remarkable phenomenon, that through Raphael the Greek element arises again within Christendom. In Raphael we see a Christianity appear in an age that, all around him, presents what is actually anti-Christian. In Raphael there lives a Christianity that goes far beyond the narrowness of the Christianity that had gone before, raising itself to a far-reaching conception of the world. However, this is a Christianity that does not merely point vaguely to infinite realms of the spiritual, but assumes artistic form—much as the ancient Greeks had united their idea of the gods with what lives and weaves formlessly in the universe, pressing this into figures that delight our senses.

In letting one or another of Raphael's creations work on us, in attempting to form an overall picture of his works in their exalted, perfect forms, they appear to us as possessing a wonderful excess of youth, for Raphael died at 37 years of age. Not for the sake of a grey theory, nor as a philosophical-historical “construct,” but out of immediate feeling deriving from Raphael's works, it may be said: The lawful continuum of mankind's spiritual life presents itself to us most clearly with such a towering figure as Raphael.

Imagining the progress of spiritual life as a straight line in which cause and effect follow upon each other is truly not in accord with the facts. There is a saying that seems obvious, belonging to the “golden” pronouncements of humanity, namely, that life and nature make no leaps. However, in many respects life and nature make leaps all the time. We see this in the development of the plant, from the green leaf to the blossom, from the blossom to the fruit. There we see everything develop, yet we see that leaps are inevitable.

It is no different with the spiritual life of humanity, and this is connected with various evolutionary secrets. One of these is that a later epoch always has to reach back to an earlier one. Hence, just as the masculine and the feminine have to work together, so must the various Time Spirits work together, mutually fertilizing each other, so that further development can take place. Thus, the Roman period around the time of the Caesars had to be fertilized by the Greek element, for a new age to arise. And in the same way, the Time Spirit that then arose had to be fertilized by the Christian impulse, in order to make the internalizing possible that we see in St. Augustine and others. Similarly, more recently, such an inwardly advanced soul as Raphael had to be fertilized, made productive by the Greek element. Doubly buried though Greek culture then was, it yet reappeared, being doubly “extracted:” for the eyes in that the sculptures had been covered over by the soil of Italy; and for the souls, in the buried works of literature that revealed the Greek spirit. The centuries of the first Christian millennium, on the other hand, had been extraordinarily little touched by what lived in Greek philosophy, in Greek poetry.

Having been doubly buried, Greek culture waited, as it were, in a “beyond” for a later point in time when it could fertilize the human soul that had meanwhile been imbued with a new religion. Buried, withdrawn for outer eyes and buried likewise for souls that had no notion that it would develop further, it actually flowed on like a river that sometimes continues underground, out of sight, far below a mountain, returning afterwards to the surface. This Greek culture was buried outwardly for the senses, inwardly for the substrata of the soul. Now it reappeared. For spiritual sight it was excavated not only in that it was fetched from old manuscripts, but also in that people began to experience the world in the Greek manner once again, sensing how the spirit lives in everything material, how everything that is material is the revelation of the spiritual. People began to connect once more with what Plato and Aristotle had thought.

But Raphael was the individual on whom this could take effect most of all, since in his whole disposition he had fully assimilated the Christian impulses. With him this twice buried and twice resurrected Greek culture now brought it about that he was in a position to recreate the evolution of humanity in figures. How marvellously was he able to accomplish this in the pictures of the Camera della Segnatura. There we see the old spiritual contests arise again in pictures—the struggle of those spirits that had developed in the time of internalizing, that had not been there in the Greek period. That they could be viewed in this way in Raphael's time—for that, the whole period of internalizing was needed. We now see this internalizing painted on the walls of the papal rooms.

What the Greeks had conceived and formed into figures we now see internalized. The inner strivings and inner battles humanity had undergone we see infused with the Greek creative spirit, with the Greek artistic mood and sense for beauty, conjured onto the walls of the papal palace. The Greeks poured into their statues their conception of the way in which the gods worked upon the world. How human beings felt in approaching the secrets of existence presents itself to us in the picture often referred to as the School of Athens How the human soul had learned to view the Greek gods meets us in the remarkable recreation of the gods of Homer in the Parnassus. These are not the gods of the Iliad and the Odyssey but the gods as seen by a soul that had already gone through the epoch of internalization.

On the other wall we see the picture that must remain unforgettable to everyone, of whatever religious confession—as little as one can still gain an idea of it—the Disputa in which something most inward is depicted. The other picture presents what is attained by means of a certain philosophical striving, but in Greek beauty of form. In the picture opposite, the “Disputa,” we encounter the most profound content the human being can experience. And the fact that we do not need to think in terms of a narrow Christian consciousness becomes evident here in that we find the Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva motifs expressed in a quite different way. We have before us what the human soul can experience inwardly of the Trinity—every soul, no matter what confession it belongs to. This appears to us not merely symbolically, in the symbolism of the Trinity in the upper part of the picture. It appears to us further in each countenance of the Church fathers and philosophers, in every motion of the hands, in the whole distribution of the figures, in the wonderful colour composition. It appears to us in the picture's totality. In the beautiful forms permeated with the Greek spirit we are presented with the human soul in its entire inwardness. The inwardness experienced in the course of one-and-a-half millennia arises once again, as outer revelation. In Raphael's pictures we see Christianity, not in the form of the paganism of the Roman popes and cardinals, but as the ancient Greek paganism, capable of creating beautiful, splendid figures.

Thus, Raphael stands at a turning point, at a watershed, pointing both to an earlier age that had preceded Christianity in the beauty of outer revelation, and to what may be seen as inherent in the “education of the human race,” the internalizing of the human soul. Hence, in standing in front of these pictures of Raphael, these miraculous, unique works of art, they appear to us as the confluence of two ages clearly separate and distinct from each other: an age of outer experience and one of inner experience.

Yet, at the same time, in standing before these pictures, they open up a perspective into the future. For, with a feeling for what has been said, who does not sense that—in spite of all the externality that has still to evolve further in humanity's future—this internalizing must necessarily also progress further in the course of evolution? Indeed, the human soul will need to find periods of ever greater inwardness in subsequent lives.

If we turn to literature and study, not as an art scholar or mere reader, the works of a spirit such as Herman Grimm, who spared no effort in portraying the workings of human phantasy, we can understand the profound empathy with which he contemplated Raphael's creations. It becomes comprehensible, when, at a certain point in his work on Raphael we find words that take on special meaning. We see how he stood before Raphael's creations with heartfelt interest. One has to take account of what passed through Herman Grimm's soul at a certain point in his work on Raphael, in the first few pages where, in casting a glance at Raphael's emergence from ancient times, he only modestly touches on something. It is not evident, really, from where this thought comes.—In the middle of wider historical considerations into which Raphael is placed, a thought occurs to Herman Grimm and is written down: “I see before me developments of humanity, participation in which will be denied me, but that appear to me so radiantly beautiful that, on their account, it would be worth the trouble of beginning human life all over again.”⁹

This yearning of Herman Grimm for “reincarnation” in the introduction to his Raphael book is remarkable and profoundly indicative of a particular feeling living in a human being who attempted to come to terms with Raphael and his connection to other epochs. Does one not sense what can be expressed more or less in saying: Works such as those of Raphael are not only an end-result. They lead us to acknowledge not only how grateful we have to be in regard to what past ages have given us. Such works call forth feelings in us such as the feeling of hope, since they strengthen us in our belief in the progress of humanity. We can say to ourselves, these works would not be as they are if humanity were not a unified being whose nature it is to advance. Thus, certainty and hope arise for us if we allow Raphael to work on us in the right way. And we can then say: Through what he created artistically, Raphael has spoken to humanity!

In contemplating the frescoes in the Camera della Segnatura>, we do of course sense the transience of the external work. From these works, frequently painted over, we can gain little idea of what Raphael once conjured onto the wall. We sense that at some point in the future human beings will no longer be able to experience the original works. But we know, humanity will progress ever further.

Fundamentally, the works of Raphael first embarked on their triumphal march when, with love and devotion, innumerable engravings, photographs and reproductions of his works were made. Their effect continues right into the reproductions. One can understand Herman Grimm when he relates that he once hung a large collotype¹⁰ of the Sistine Madonna in his room and on entering, it was always as though he were not fully permitted to enter—as though the room now belonged to the picture as a sanctuary of the Madonna. Some will already have experienced how the soul actually becomes a different being than it otherwise is in ordinary life, when truly able to give itself over to a picture by Raphael—even a mere reproduction. Certainly, the originals will some day no longer exist. But, do the originals not still exist in other realms?

Herman Grimm frankly states in his book on Homer:¹¹ edition, Stuttgart and Berlin 1907, p. 473. We can also no longer fully enjoy the original works of Homer, since in ordinary life, without higher spiritual forces, we are no longer in a position to enter into all the nuances and expressions of the Greek language in their full beauty and power, in taking in Homer's “Iliad” and “Odyssey”. There too we no longer have the originals. Even so, Homer's poetic works speak to us. But, what Raphael gave to humanity will live on as evidence of the fact that there was once a time in the development of humanity when, in the widest circles people were unable to immerse themselves in thoughts and written works, since that was far from being the norm at that time. However, in Raphael's creations the secrets of existence spoke to the eyes of human beings. The age of Raphael was one that read less, but that looked more. This makes it clear that that age was differently constituted. But what Raphael created will continue to have an effect in all future times. Confirmation of this will be what Raphael will continue to say to humanity. Thus, Raphael's creations will live on in the further course of human evolution, live on inwardly in lives that follow upon each other. In undergoing future lives, Raphael's spirit will have ever greater things, of an ever more inward nature, to impart to humanity.

Thus, spiritual science points to a further life in a two-fold sense; a living-on of a kind described in lectures that have been given and that will be spoken of further, becoming our guide in going through earthly existence in ever new epochs. It can be said to be entirely true, what Herman Grimm states in words summarizing what resulted for him from his overall study of Raphael: Even if Raphael's works will eventually have faded or been destroyed, Raphael will still live on. For, with him something has been implanted in the spirit of humanity that will forever germinate and bear fruit.

Every human soul sufficiently able to deepen itself in Raphael will come to feel this. Only in entering into a sense with which Herman Grimm was imbued—heightening and deepening this by means of spiritual science—do we come to understand Raphael fully. We indicated recently how close he stood, in contemplating Raphael ever and again, to spiritual science.—We can understand our relation to Raphael and such thoughts as have been ventured today can grow in us, if we conclude by summarizing what has been said in words of Herman Grimm:

Human beings will always want to know about Raphael; about the beautiful young painter who surpassed all others; who was fated to die early. Whose death all Rome mourned. When the works of Raphael are finally lost, his name will remain engraved in human memory.¹²

Thus, did Herman Grimm express himself in beginning his discourse on Raphael. We understand these words; and we understand him again in concluding, at the end of his work on Raphael:

All the world will want to know about the life-work of such a human being, for Raphael has become one of the pillars upon which the higher culture of the human spirit is founded. We would fain draw nearer to him, since we have need of him for our well-being.¹³

• 1. 1828–1901
• 2. From: Wilhelm Meisters Wanderjahre, Vol. 1, Chapter 10.
• 3. Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, 1729-1781
• 4. 354–430
• 5. Astorre Baglione. See: Francesco Matarazzo: Cronache della Città di Perugia.
• 6. Girolamo Savonarola (1452-1498), prior of the Monastery of San Marco, burned at the stake at the instigation of Pope Alexander VI.
• 7. Fra Bartolomeo, who became a Dominican in 1500.
• 8. Karl August to his friend Knebel, 14th October, 1783.
• 9. In Herman Grimm: Das Leben Raphaels, (The Life of Raphael), p. 4.
• 10. Phototypie
• 11. See Herman Grimm: Homer's Iliad; 2^nd 11
• 12. From Herman Grimm: Das Leben Raphaels, p. 1.
• 13. Ibid., p. 334.

I. Report in the “Deutsche Warte - Tageblatt für Politik und Gesellschaft, geistiges und wirtschaftliches Leben” from August 29, 1899

On Monday evening, the Freie Volksbühne held a Goethe celebration in Keller's Festsäle at Koppenstraße 29, which was attended by a large number of members and guests. Dr. Rudolf Steiner spoke about: “Goethe and the Present”. The speaker presented Goethe as a child of the 18th century, but at the same time as a man of the future who placed science above all other things. Even as a boy, he had instinctively sensed the scientific worldview of the future, and early on had opposed the prevailing worldview. At the age of six, on the occasion of the great earthquake in Lisbon, in which thousands died, he rejected the idea of a benevolent God and created his own natural religion. The same thoughts had guided him during his studies in Leipzig, where he had enthusiastically followed the natural science lectures but had stayed away from the philosophy classes. Thus, he became convinced that man is a natural product, like any other, and has not received any special moral qualities from a higher being, and he expressed this conviction in the words: “Noble, helpful and good, let each one be, for that alone distinguishes him from all other creatures we know.” A new idea of God then emerged for him from the sight of Greek works of art in Italy, as he expressed in his “Hymn to Nature”: “She, nature, has put me in, she will lead me out – I trust her.” The lecturer then went on to explain how the mighty spirit titan had undertaken to embody the entire workings of the world in a single idea handed down from the sixteenth century, in “Faust”, the contrasting figure to Luther. In Faust, Goethe wanted to show how man can find satisfaction through his own deeds; however, he was unable to carry out his work because he was not a man of action, but an artist who observed. This truth also emerges when we look at his personal life – Goethe was an experimenter in life. Now followed a detailed discussion of “Faust,” as it has become, along with a description of the individual phases of the Olympian's life and the influence these had on his work.

II. Report at the “Freie Volksbühne” in October 1899

In accordance with the decision of the last general assembly, the association's board had organized a Goethe celebration on August 28, 1899 in Keller's festival halls. Dr. Rudolf Steiner had been won for the evening. He gave a lively lecture that captivated the audience and said roughly the following:

One does not show proper reverence to a mind like Goethe's by engaging in blind worship, but rather by separating the lasting aspects of his creations from the ephemeral trappings, in which he reveals himself to be only a child of his time. Goethe is the herald of the scientific world view that is bearing fruit in the present, and at the same time the son of the eighteenth century. Despite its enlightenment, this century could not rise above the prejudice that man is a special, higher being than other creatures of nature; it could not come to the realization that nature produces man according to the same eternal and necessary laws as the simplest animal or plant creature. The assumption of a creative God outside and above nature was held fast. From his earliest youth, Goethe worshipped nature as the only gradual, creative entity. He sought to gain insight into the course of world events not through supernatural truths but by immersing himself in the natural sciences. He also saw only higher natural laws at work in the work of artists. When he saw the works of art of the ancient Greeks in Italy, he became convinced that they had been created according to the same laws that nature itself follows. He wrote down the words “There is necessity, there is God” after seeing these works of art. In the prime of his career, Goethe's work was a service to nature. Goethe gave the most forceful rejection of all supernatural deities in his Prometheus. Everything that man can be and become, he should strive for out of himself, not through the prospect of an otherworldly existence. He originally wanted to express this idea in his Faust as well. The aim was to show that man can achieve a satisfying existence by developing his own powers. Nothing of heaven and hell, of God and devil, was contained in the Faust plan which Goethe had in mind in the early seventies in Frankfurt. Instead of the later God, there was at that time the Earth Spirit, who is only a personification of the forces of nature; and Mephistopheles was not conceived as the devil, but as the embodiment of evil; he was not a messenger of God, but of the Earth Spirit. When, at the end of the 1890s, Schiller encouraged Goethe to continue Faust, a break in his world view had already occurred. He had interwoven his earlier ideas, through which he had become the prophet of the nineteenth century, with the thoughts of a dying time. He could no longer finish Faust as he had begun it. He introduces God and the devil into the poem. These now become the main characters, fighting for Faust's soul. Faust, a great character, an image of striving humanity, became a plaything in the hands of heavenly and infernal powers. This is how Faust says in the first part of the poem of the earth spirit:

You lead the line of the living
before me, and teach me to know my brothers
in the silent bush,
in the air and water,

in other words, how a Darwinian understands nature and man together as a single great unity. And in the second part, the same Faust is redeemed not by his own strength but by the blessed host, because “love from above” has taken hold of him. The Goethe who drafted the first plan for Faust continues to influence our views and perceptions to this day; the Goethe who completed Faust belongs to the eighteenth century. The speaker was thanked with enthusiastic applause.

Report in the “Berliner Hochschul-Zeitung” of June 25, 1901.

On Tuesday, June 18, the Natural Science Section experienced a momentous evening. Around one hundred people listened to Dr. Rudolf Steiner's lecture on “Goethe's View of Nature and the Present.” The lecture culminated in the answer to the question: To what extent was Goethe a forerunner of the modern materialistic worldview? The whole of Goethe's position in relation to today's natural science, the speaker explained, characterizes the poet's own words: He would most like to take a trip around the world to India, not to make new discoveries, but to look at what had already been discovered from his perspective. It is said that Goethe was incapable of an objective view of nature. This is not true. Goethe proceeded methodically, like any of the modern researchers. And his greatest merit was that the scientific way of thinking led him first to man himself as a creature of nature. His goal was to understand the whole human being as a natural product, and that is what makes Goethe appear to us as imbued with thoroughly modern views of nature. He fought against the outdated theological concept of creation, he fought against Linnaeus' system of classification. He sought to comprehend nature as a whole from a comprehensive point of view. His well-known investigations into the intermediate jaw show us his tireless efforts to remove the last anatomical barrier that was intended to separate man, the highest link in the natural chain of development, from the rest of the animal world. Man is not qualitatively different from the rest of the organic world, only quantitatively; for he is still building a moral world for himself. “Noble, helpful and good should man be,” but he too must bow to the ‘eternal, brazen, great laws.’ What Kant sought in the physical world, Goethe sought in the organic world: the inner connection, the natural lawfulness of all being and all phenomena. This is where Goethe was so infinitely ahead of his time, which makes him appear as the spirit of the new era. If he had known Darwin and Haeckel, he would have said an enthusiastic “Yes” to what they said. His skull studies show how he was the first to consciously enter the field of modern comparative anatomy. As everywhere, Goethe, as a naturalist, consciously pursued a clear idea; it was not accidental lucky discoveries that he made, as one so often wants to reproach him for today.

Goethe was a naturalist through and through, and this is no less evident in his concept of art. That is why the works of Greek art seemed so sublime to him, because they created according to the same laws as nature itself. In his opinion, every artist had to feel the laws of nature before he could form organic figures himself.

And what about Goethe's God? His concept of God was the feeling of a unified world order. Goethe also sought harmony between the inorganic and organic world. Kant had described this striving as an adventure of reason, Goethe dared to persist in it.

Even if one does not want to see Goethe as an important link in the development of natural science, one thing is certain: he was the first to develop within himself the great materialistic-monistic view of nature that was to determine the character of the 19th century. Modern science has confirmed what his genius had anticipated. He initiated the great spiritual revolution, which was called to overthrow old prejudices and evoke a new spirit of the age. We must always look to him when we seek the connection between the phenomena and the great sentiments of the entire world view.

The brilliant words of the proven speaker were followed by stormy applause. After a short discussion, in which Mr. cand. phil. Rehe took the floor, the evening was concluded with the usual cozy part.

Report in “Pädagogische Reform, also the organ of the Hamburg Teaching Materials Exhibition” of August 10, 1904

It is not difficult to see how Goethe's Faust drama is virtually a tragedy of the pursuit of education. And through the student, who receives instruction from Mephistopheles and then, in the second part, shares his own wisdom, the tragedy also becomes a comedy at times. But even more! It is not only education in general that we see here being striven for and even ridiculed. It is also a matter of very special historical institutions of the educational system that are presented to us here. The medieval university comes to life again.

To the extent that our knowledge of all aspects of education advances, it will also become more valuable to us to understand more deeply such images as Goethe has given us here. His work is a late manifestation of a long literary tradition, the many-faceted Faust saga and Faust poetry that has been unfolding since the 16th century. A modern movement, which aims to promote and research the highest levels of all education and training, cannot ignore such deeply characteristic literary representations. The movement, which has set itself this task, and which therefore seeks to cultivate the pedagogy of the sciences and the arts as such, has in fact sought to grasp the significance of the Faust theme for itself.

The somewhat cumbersome and misleading term “science and art education” has been replaced by the simpler term “higher education” by that movement. This indicates the decisive role that the high schools actually play in the education of the sciences and arts. Even in the poems composed for Faust, the various institutions of the higher education system play a role. Nevertheless, for this literature and for this movement, the role of the school system is primarily only an external matter. The main thing here as there is the way in which the discipleship of a science or even of an art develops in terms of the subject matter and the person. And Goethe's Faust gives unique pictures of this. The author of these lines has made a few suggestions in two other places, in the two essays: 'Faustschüler und Genossen' ('Ethische Kultur', 11 April 1903) and 'Ein neuer Faust' ('Neue Freie Presse', 5 July 1903). It seemed urgently necessary, however, to treat the subject more thoroughly than these brief allusions allowed. The Association for University Pedagogy, which seeks to provide an external framework for this modern movement, therefore turned to a researcher who has long been devoted to its tendencies and who has special knowledge of Goethe's work. Dr. Rudolf Steiner took on the task of a lecture on this subject, entitled: 'Faust as a Problem for Pedagogy of Science'. The lecture took place in the above-mentioned association in Berlin and also gave rise to a lively discussion in that circle. We can hardly continue our own treatment of the subject better than by simply leaving the floor to the aforementioned lecturer and the voices of the debate that are added to his lecture. Dr. Steiner explained approximately:

The idea of the theme of Faust as a pedagogical problem in science arose from the founder of the Association for University Pedagogy. A certain shudder – the lecturer continued – initially seized me, as if it were just a continuation of the old habit of linking everything to Goethe. On careful consideration, however, I found an intimate connection to what we represent under the name of university pedagogy. Pedagogy finds its special application at all levels of school institutions: at elementary schools, at secondary schools, and also at universities in the broader sense of the word. The fact that these should also be subject to a kind of pedagogy is precisely the point of our endeavors. If a comprehensive literary account of this is ever undertaken, the last chapter will be dedicated to the topic at hand. After all his other remarks, the author will have to answer the important question: How does a subject dealt with at university relate to the ideal aspects of life? What does our higher education have to offer us in terms of a higher conception of life? Everywhere we have to go through one-sided educational paths. How do we get a free and broad view? To a satisfying conception of life?

The question thus posed also underlies the Faust problem in its historical form, which it has taken on since the 16th century and which was still found in the 19th century in Nikolaus Lenau. In a nutshell, it is the question: What does the university have to offer people?

The historical Faust is said to have become a bachelor in Heidelberg in 1509, later a magister and doctor, and also to have studied in Ingolstadt, etc. There is no question about the historical figure of Dr. Faust and the significant impression he made on his contemporaries. Faust comes across as a highly dangerous person. As early as 1505, Abbot Tritheim wrote about him. According to this, Faust was already a famous personality at that time, who appeared in many places in a dizzying manner. Later he went to Krakow to study magic. Now the question arises for us as to how a doctor of theology and medicine could go to Krakow for the sake of the local odds and ends and then move on as a magician. In addition, his dissolute lifestyle, etc. is also reported. So this was a personality who had done his studies in the best possible way and yet got so little support for his life from them. Did science offer him so little strength? Is it possible to reach the pinnacles of learning and still not be able to cope with life?

It is an eminently pedagogical question that asks about the value of academic study in life. We also see it in Goethe. Faust was not a pathological personality, however, but rather a phenomenon of his time. And Goethe put his most personal experiences into Faust. Remember the way he speaks of himself on the occasion of his leaving the University of Strasbourg. The higher education issues are swirling around us.

Goethe's personality certainly has a lot to say to us here, despite the fact that his studies were disrupted. He was in a similar situation to Faust. He studied in Leipzig and in Strasbourg in a scientific way that was close to us moderns, and in doing so he also sought enlightenment about the riddles of life. He confronts us with a harsh doubt, but this was also a fundamental mood in Goethe's personality. With the necessary distinctions, we find Goethe similar to Faust, only without his lack of grounding. So in Goethe's case, too, university education seems to be powerless to provide the ideal goods of life. How does the student come to such a state of helplessness? Goethe reflected on this throughout his life. However, he sought redemption for his Faust from outside. If he had been an older man still in the Age of Enlightenment, he would (according to his own statement) have concluded Faust with the words:

A good man in his dark urges
is well aware of the right path.

Now, however, in his old age, he had to close with mysticism. Goethe was unable to say how the scholar as such could relate to life.

We are therefore confronted with a depressing thought; and this raises two further questions. Firstly, how do such personalities in particular arrive at such questions? The naive person will indeed be easily satisfied; but how do these questions arise in the scientific person in particular? One thinks of Lenau's “Faust at the Corpse”, from which no answer ever comes! But then, secondly, the question arises: does such doubt arise from the necessary limits of science itself or rather from our inadequate university education? In the former case, we understand it epistemologically; in the latter, in terms of university pedagogy. The lecturer said that he would like to show that the latter is correct.

We see a much-studied personality who is powerless in the face of life's mysteries. The point is that something takes the place of science. Through science, questions arise in the student that would otherwise not come to him. That is not the purpose, but it is a necessary side effect of scientific endeavor. Jurisprudence may teach us this and that; but in addition, questions arise with it, such as that of human responsibility, which the naive do not ask. National economics awakens questions in us about the social context. The natural sciences have a similar effect: think of biology, especially the question of the gradual development of organic life. And the study of ancient classical art leads us to question the psychology of the Greek people and the development of humanity as a whole. Thus, our studies present us with scrupulous questions precisely about the highest enigmas of human life. We cannot become proficient lawyers, etc. without those side effects.

It is natural that our studies, whatever else they may offer, initially make us uncertain; and all the more so because every study must be one-sided. Dilthey's “Introduction to the Spiritual Sciences” shows that we can only ever see the whole from individual perspectives. How do we go about overcoming these unavoidable limitations? How do we move from one-sidedness to all-sidedness? It is only natural that someone who has gone through one-sidedness becomes unstable. However, Goethe could not solve the question in a professional, university-like manner. And I, too, said the lecturer, must proceed one-sidedly here and not also, for example, become aesthetic.

Goethe could not find what he was looking for in the knowledge of the universities of his time. During his studies in Leipzig, he sought a world view. Later, his association with Fräulein von Klettenberg and his study of Paracelsus came.

What then follows from this necessary relationship? The sciences burden us with questions, but cannot free us from them in the first instance. The challenge is to give people what they have the right to demand here. Goethe sought to show this in his own way. Our question is: How can we organize university teaching with regard to the side effects described? That final chapter of a complete work on university pedagogy will go from branch to branch and ask about the doubts about life that arise there. Furthermore, how are these doubts to be dealt with at the university itself, so that the student is equipped to face life? In a sense, if we may speak in extremes, the university sins by burdening us. The task of its pedagogy will be to answer the question of what demands are to be made on university pedagogy in this regard. Even in primary school pedagogy, it is similar. The goal of true university pedagogy must be to not dispel those doubts, but to equip us to fight them. But that is precisely what is usually neglected.

Now we know why the historical Faust could become unstable. It was precisely in his time that it was possible for the student to find no summary consolidation of his studies. In the Middle Ages, it was theology that provided this crowning. From the fifteenth to the sixteenth century, a major turnaround took place in the scientific community; its expression is precisely the Faust saga. How do you cope with life without the Bible and theology? These had, of course, resolved doubts in their own way. In the eighteenth century, university studies had not yet progressed that far.

Kant's question: How is science possible? It also has a university pedagogical side. We recognize it in Kant's two writings, the first from 1796: “On a newly raised, noble tone in philosophy,” and the second from 1798: “The dispute between the faculties.” And well into the nineteenth century, this instability can be found as a psychological basis for scientific personalities. Our poet also took on this fundamental question of the time before Goethe. Thus he became the poet of the university pedagogical problem.

We put forward the thesis: Our task with regard to university pedagogy will only be complete when we solve these scruples. If we do not do this, if we let the student go without what we mean, then there is an ethical-university pedagogical breach of duty. Each individual specialized course of study must be accompanied by a careful deepening of the life questions that arise from that study. If the university educator does not carelessly pass by the human soul, he must come to terms with this question. We will not advance in our profession, but we will promote the life questions in the spirit of what has been studied. We can make the Faust-like natures, even the small ones, disappear in this way.

It is impossible here to go into detail about Goethe. We must not mistake Mephistopheles's mockery, the expression of the banal life, for Goethe's words. It is from these contexts that the sultry atmosphere arises, that peculiar milieu that characterizes the first part of the tragedy. Opposite the narrow-minded Famulus Wagner stands the helpless Faust; and then again the student, who is longing for the problems, but does not find the solution in the unpedagogical treatment of science! Goethe has Mephistopheles express this false scientific approach. In the second part of the tragedy, we then see how Goethe, in his poetic way, thinks about it. In the meantime, he had also undergone practical university pedagogical studies – at the institutions of the University of Jena, which he headed as minister. The scenes of the first part had been written by longing and demand. The scenes of the second part were different. Goethe had gained intimate experience as the supervisor of the university. Anyone who has even slightly examined the files of the Weimar Ministry recognizes Goethe as the most ideal university administrator, who on the one hand pays attention to the most immediate practical demands of life and on the other hand to scientific demands, but strives to harmoniously unite the two. Goethe knew very well how to get out of the university. With the help of these experiences and his own efforts, he wrote the second part of his tragedy, especially the second act. The character of Homunculus has been the subject of a wide range of commentaries, all of which are valid, since figures like this have endless layers of meaning. In any case, one thing is symbolically expressed here: the connection between scientific knowledge and the highest goals in life. Goethe also incorporated his knowledge of science education into the second part. There he shows symbolically how science is developed step by step; the observation of living nature is important, the progression from the dry conceptual to the human. But the homunculus has a second task: it leads to antiquity. From Goethe's Italian Journey, we see how the poet seeks knowledge of nature step by step, but also transforms this knowledge into skill and leads it to the summit of human existence. What is the goal of art? “There is necessity, there is God” and so on. He now shows us this psychological development of his own mind in the second part. In this way, knowledge should never become dry, nor should it ever stand alone; it should always lead to life. The homunculus had a longing for reality, a longing to step out of one-sidedness. May people only ever be led to dry study: this must also have the power to lead beyond itself.

Thus, in a final chapter on university pedagogy, we have to show what great life puzzles the individual scientific endeavors pose, and how the puzzles are to be solved. This is not an insurmountable task. The individual branches of science today make great demands; but it must nevertheless be possible to satisfy those demands of science.

My intention was — the lecturer concluded — to gain a result from Goethe, and indeed only one demand. How this demand is to be fulfilled will be the subject of many further pedagogical considerations at the School of Spiritual Science. I have endeavored to prove that thesis to be necessary.

The lecturer — this voice stated — showed how the positive sciences stimulate us to pose questions, but do not solve the ultimate 'metaphysical' questions. What is true, at any rate, is that science does not want to and cannot give more. However, the reason why science is nevertheless capable of more than just the specific lies in the fact that the naive mind passes by the deeper questions, since it lacks experience and the work of previous generations. To put a problem right is as much as to solve it halfway. The sciences rise above superficial observation, delve deeper, show things better than those and ask new questions. With knowledge comes doubt. The deeper we penetrate, the more we ask. But how can this misfortune be eliminated? Uncertainty can be depressing for us. Ms. Beneke has used the motif of this insurmountable burden to support the assumption of immortality. In any case, it is one of the healthiest motives for her. However, those questions cannot be answered by Goethe. I don't know, said the interpellant, what can be done for university education there. Only the individual teacher can give the individual student something beyond philistinism. Antiquity also offers something here, but far too little.

Another voice, this time from the field of medicine, put it as follows: It would be asking too much to review everything. Given that there is so much agreement, it would be ungrateful not to fulfill the necessary obligations. We have been led to a pseudo-university level, so to speak. One could even cite the preacher Salomonis and Friedrich Schiller to prove that all knowledge leads to doubt. But it seems that the individual sciences have to show that these puzzles raised by them are insoluble, and every single teacher could ensure that. But this goes beyond our previous knowledge. The lecturer was clever in not saying how to do it. Perhaps it means that we should go back to our philosophical college as we once did. But does philosophy have an answer to everything? Rather, it seems to us that it is necessary to point out that the search for truth is paramount. Today, due to the natural sciences, the circumstances are different than they used to be.

The author of these lines emphasized that the topic is eminently pedagogical and will actually be treated in a chapter of a comprehensive work.

Another speaker then said that we cannot do justice to the wealth of material presented in the lecture, and that he intends to emphasize only a single point. Goethe was so universal that it is impossible to pin down any single thing as the poet's personal opinion. With him, everything is in a state of becoming. According to Hegel, this corresponds to the dialectical development in things. What science is it then that gives a comprehensive picture and thus a concentrated effect on the personality? First of all, philosophy comes into play, especially metaphysics, which Goethe himself despised. The fact that one no longer wants to deal with it is a modern fear product. For a long time now, it has been practiced at his university for the first time. The problems in question are well known, mainly those concerning the relationship between our world of ideas and the real world. But one can arrive at this problem from every science. Just as the natural sciences can be referred to, for example, jurisprudence can be referred to. It has to establish the i8&i0oxpayia tüs vvxig; with that we become master of the problem of life. The most despised science, dogmatics, takes intensive account of those problems. In this way, all the individual sciences could be cited. The division of labor makes this understandable. Metaphysics cannot solve the problem of life without the other sciences. The great change that has taken place in the course of the last few decades has led us to see as the actual knowable only that which lies within consciousness. W. Jerusalem (Vienna), in his essay on the judgment function, takes refuge in a realism that the “you problem” compels. So we are referred to the practical purpose and to the police! I cannot go along with this sacrilege against the absoluteness of the cognitive drive. We say: if you want to teach, you have to have something (Goethe). There is a need to create knowledge in others. So we move from science to the “you problem”. However, we still need a science for the connection between science and life. And this is probably pedagogy. In it, all sciences come into their own. Furthermore, one of the purposes of higher education is also to educate university educators. We also need a university education seminar. The question that has been raised several times as to who should train its teachers is easily answered by the fact that the older ones train the younger ones.

In a final word, the lecturer added the following: My task was strictly pedagogical. Therefore, I could not get involved with the capabilities of the individual sciences. The student must become resilient. And that includes resilience to resignation. It was necessary for me to remain strictly pedagogical here. I only wanted to discuss the psychological fact of those longings. Something must be done about them. Goethe, however, only grasped our higher education problem intuitively and exemplified it for us in the same way that he can exemplify nature for us. He did not have to think about higher education at all. As for the “how”, a course in philosophy is not enough. Rather, we have to explore pedagogically how the individual teacher has to come to terms with the tasks of life. We cannot offer detailed solutions, but we can point the way. This “how” is a major philosophical study. Therefore, the question of epistemological standpoints cannot be discussed here any further, despite the good suggestion of a seminar. The main thing is: we want to become fit for life. So it is not about dogmatic solutions, but rather about finding ways.

Goethe is one of those minds in world history that have always inspired a very special response in observers. If you approach a poem or any other of Goethe's works, regardless of which one – I emphasize that this also applies to Goethe's so-called scientific writings – at any age, you will find beauty and depth, wisdom and art in abundance in all of his works. You will encounter satisfaction from reading or any other kind of contemplation. If, perhaps after years, you approach the same work of Goethe, having matured in the meantime, having come to know the world and people yourself, you will discover that when you first approached Goethe's work, you overlooked a great deal in it, that you were unable to recognize the abundance of wisdom, beauty, depth and truth in Goethe's works. This is the case with all great and significant people in world history. And one certainly comes to know the actual significance of the truly leading spirits precisely from the circumstance that, when one approaches them, one discovers something new in them again and again, depending on the degree of spiritual maturity that one has attained. And then there is the added fact that these discoveries, so to speak, never reach an end in human life. With Goethe, if we study his truly fundamental works from five to five years, we discover something new every five years, provided that we ourselves continue to develop and do not remain at the level we have once attained. We see into an almost unfathomable depth when we begin to understand Goethe's work.

This is how it is with Goethe's “Faust”. Anyone who has seriously approached Goethe's “Faust” will be able to say, in a completely different sense than is often claimed, that Goethe's “Faust” really does contain a kind of modern gospel. If the statement that a kind of modern gospel is contained in Goethe's Faust is justified, then the statement that the little-known poem, the so-called Fairy Tale of the Green Snake and the Beautiful Lily contains Goethe's apocalypse, Goethe's secret revelation, is equally justified.

This fairy tale of the green snake and the beautiful lily contains Goethe's world view and philosophy of life in their depths. Those who read this fairy tale for the first time will usually be able to make little of it. Those who try to gain the key to it will first recognize that Goethe wanted to express something special through this fairy tale. This fairy tale of the green snake and the beautiful lily can be found in every major edition of Goethe's works. I emphasize this because I have been asked again and again: Where can I find the “fairy tale”? If you look it up in the “Conversations of German Emigrants,” you will find it at the end. This fairy tale is designed, as it were, as a completely independent piece of writing.

Before the reading of the “fairy tale” by Ms. H[olger], let me just say a few words about how Goethe came to write this fairy tale. It was in the mid-1790s, when Goethe was at the height of his creative powers. It was the time when he had gained that deep insight into nature that is expressed in his scientific writings. It was the time when he had completed the first part of Faust, which was published as a fragment in 1790. It was during this time that the idea came to him of developing Faust into a great, comprehensive picture of humanity. This work of Goethe's, which was found sealed in his estate when he died, presents itself to us as the second part of Faust. Eckermann spoke repeatedly about this second part of Faust. I would like to emphasize just one characteristic saying. Goethe says: Those who enjoy my second part of Faust as a series of dramatic images may have an aesthetic pleasure. But there will also be those who, from time to time, will intuitively recognize what I have secretly hidden in these images. And Goethe again indicates in his conversations with Eckermann that in the second part of Faust, there is a hidden, as we would say in theosophical language, an esoteric meaning. A meaning that is hidden behind the images, which one then expresses in the way that Goethe did in the second part of Faust. When we find the ordinary language of the intellect, the language of words, too poor, too dry, too barren, too sober, too mundane to express the rich abundance of the spirit that we have to present when we want to express our own deep opinion about the life of the world. The esotericists, the priests of wisdom of all times, spoke in a pictorial language. The deeper we enter into the world of ancient legends, the more we recognize that this world of legends contains symbolic disguises of great, eternal truths. It was in this sense that Goethe spoke in the second part of Faust. But he spoke even more in this sense in the fairy tale of the green snake and the beautiful lily.

In 1794, he described how he had once again set out to solve for himself the problem that occupied the minds of the time. The problem or question of human destiny, or the problem of freedom. After the great struggles for freedom had stirred hearts in Germany and France, the problem of freedom was also that of the greatest minds. Schiller was involved and he asked himself: Is a person free who is trapped in eternal necessity? Are his actions to be understood as taking place with inner necessity, like external natural phenomena with the external? Like a falling stone, or in such a way that they arise from within the person himself and he is the author of his actions? Is man a free being? That is the question that occupied not only the great minds, but the hearts of all people. Hegel, Fichte, Schelling, Novalis, the Schlegel brothers, and so on, belong in this circle. The problem of freedom is a heart problem. Schiller dealt with freedom in one of his most important works, his “Letters on the Aesthetic Education of Man”. He argued that man is a threefold being, that on the one hand he is subject to nature, and there is man in terms of corporeality. Then, at the highest pinnacle of his being, we have man as a rational being, as a spiritual being. There, according to Schiller's extraordinarily spirited explanations, he is governed by the laws of eternal life, eternal truth and goodness. These laws permeate human life. Man cannot escape them because he is clear about the fact that his destiny can only be achieved in the realm of truth and goodness. Body and mind are the two poles. And Schiller says: even the mind is subject to necessity, to logical and dutiful necessity. In this area, there can be no question of freedom, because man cannot be free. Nor can the spirit be free, for it would have to voluntarily submit to the laws of truth and goodness. On the one hand, we have the necessity of nature, on the other hand, the necessity of the spirit. Between nature and spirit, Schiller interposes the soul of man. The soul, which is in the middle, and as the connecting link between body and spirit, constitutes the actual personality of man. That which causes man to experience joy and sorrow, that which rises above natural necessity and has not yet ascended to the brazen necessity of reason. On the other hand, there is the duty of eternal truth and eternal goodness, which has a compelling effect on man. But joy and sorrow take up our laws of goodness and truth in such a way that they develop sympathy for them in their souls, that they bring them to the spirit. Thus Schiller says: “Nature's necessity is raised up to the spirit and [truth] and goodness are brought down and felt as beauty. And in this way it is incorporated.” In the sense of Schiller, Kant emphasized the eternal necessity too harshly in his categorical imperative. Schiller rejected this with the words: “No categorical imperative!”

I am happy to serve my friend, but unfortunately I do it with inclination, and so it bothers me that I am not virtuous.

– because he does not make service a matter of compelling natural necessity. Man should not be so deeply immersed in his passions that they pull him down. He should inspire them and elevate them. On the other hand, he should allow himself to be imbued by the laws of the good and the true, so that he can surrender himself to his inclinations and his inclinations give him a soul that represents eternal necessary truth and goodness. That is Schiller's problem of natural necessity. At its center stands freedom, that is Schiller's solution.

But Goethe says that all problems in man can only be solved if they are considered in the context of the greater world. He says to himself: I also want to solve the problem, but in a different way. I need a rich, comprehensive imaginative life to solve this problem. Man is a small world, and when I consider him in the context of the cosmos, then I can solve this problem.

Therefore, Goethe puts all the imagery that he has acquired from his studies to date at the service of solving this question. On the other hand, he puts all the experiences he has had as a truly spiritual participant in the work of Freemasonry at this service. It was through Freemasonry that he was able to absorb the ideas he wanted to express. Therefore, all of this must be taken into account in order to somehow solve this Goethean fairy tale of the green snake and the beautiful lily, which is so rich in content. People already tried to solve it during Goethe's lifetime. And Goethe himself said: “I do not want to talk about the ‘fairy tale’ before there are a hundred solutions from others.” There were not that many at the time, or they did not come to his attention. But then many, all too many solutions came. People have tried to solve it from the point of view of criticism, of rationalists, from a purely Masonic point of view and so on. But these are only individual points of view and are not sufficient. They are one-sided points of view. If time permits, we will make at least a few suggestions and comments after the lecture by Miss Holger about what Goethe wants to say with this enigmatic fairy tale. I will therefore only say that today, with the short time, I can only give hints. For those who want to delve deeper, I would like to draw attention to the lecture on “Goethe as a Theosophist,” where I will try to show the depth of his world view.

If Theosophy were to claim that it is something completely new, only having come into the world in the last few decades, then it could easily be dismissed as ineffective. For it is easy for people to believe that individual special truths, new acquisitions in some field of knowledge, could enrich human thought and perception in the advancing age; but not that which concerns man's deepest innermost core, the source of human wisdom, that this should appear as something completely new in any age. This is not to be believed without further ado, and it is therefore only natural that such a belief, as if Theosophy could or wanted to bring something completely new, would have to cause mistrust of the Theosophical movement. But Theosophy has always, since it first tried to influence the modern cultural movement, described itself as an ancient wisdom, as something that people have sought, that they have hoped to attain in the most diverse forms at all times. And it has been the task of the theosophical movement to search in the various religions and world views for the different forms in which people throughout the ages have tried to penetrate to the source of truth. Theosophy has revealed that at different times, even in the most ancient times, there was something deeply related to the wisdom by which man tried to recognize his goal. And so it is indeed. Theosophy makes us modest with regard to the achievements of our own time. The well-known, thoroughly immodest saying that we have come so gloriously far in this 19th century is strangely limited by a consideration of intellectual life in its deepest sense, through the centuries and the millennia.

However, I do not wish to take you back to ancient times; instead, I would like to show you a modern personality who has tried to put into practice the ancient wisdom inscribed on the Greek temple with the words “Know Thyself”, that such a modern personality, who made this saying his own, is fundamentally in complete harmony with what Theosophy describes as its doctrine and belief. This personality is none other than Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. This personality is undoubtedly familiar not only to Germans, but also to many other cultured people of the present day. He is more or less so for each individual. Goethe, however, is a mind that one relates to in a very special way. He is a spirit that one can study at any point in one's life, and one will find much that reveals not only the great artist, the great poet with outstanding qualities, but one will soon, if one delves further, be able to judge Goethe the great sage, with whom one has such an affinity that, if one returns to him after years, one can always discover something new and ever more in him. We find that Goethe is one of those minds that contain an infinite amount. And if we have learned new things time and again to add to our own little treasure trove of wisdom and then we return to Goethe, we are amazed and stand in awe once again at what was previously closed to us because we lacked the echo to the realm that spoke through him. And no matter how much such a person has cultivated his inner life, no matter how much profound wisdom he finds in Goethe when he waits a few more years and delves into his writings again, he will be convinced that he finds something new, greater, even infinite in Goethe's works. Goethe is never exhausted. This is an experience that is particularly made by those who have trust, who have faith in the deep development of the human soul.

It is said that in his “Faust” Goethe has given us a kind of modern gospel. If this saying is to be accepted, then Goethe has also given us, in addition to his gospel, a kind of secret revelation, a kind of apocalypse. This apocalypse is hidden in his works; it forms the conclusion of the “Conversations of German Emigrants” and is read only by a few. I have always been asked where this fairy tale is to be found in Goethe's works. It is in all the editions of Goethe's works and, as I said, forms the conclusion of the “Conversations of German Emigrants”. In this fairy tale, Goethe created a work of art of infinite beauty. I will attempt to give an interpretation of this fairy tale without destroying the immediate pictorial impression of the work of art. Goethe has woven his most intimate thoughts and ideas into the “Fairytale”. In the last years of his life, he said to Eckermann: “My dear friend, I want to tell you something that may be useful to you when you look at my works. My works will not become popular; a few people will understand what I wanted to say, but nothing can make my works popular.” He probably said this with the second part of Faust in mind and meant that those who enjoy Faust can have an immediate artistic impression. But those who get behind the secrets hidden in Faust will also be able to say what is hidden behind these images.

I do not wish to speak about the second part of Faust, but rather about the fairy tale of the green snake and the beautiful lily, in which Goethe expressed himself even more intimately than in the second part of Faust. I would like to speak about what Goethe has secretly hidden in these strange images. But I would also like to speak about why Goethe used the pictorial expression to express his most intimate thoughts. Both questions will be answered in the course of the lecture.

Anyone who understands the Fairy Tale of the Green Snake and the Beautiful Lily knows that in Goethe we have a theosophist, a mystic. Goethe also represented the wisdom and the view of life that Theosophy advocates in a popular form; and the “Fairy Tale” is a fully valid proof of this. But in the times when Goethe was expressing himself, people did not try to clothe the highest truths in words through the power of the intellect in public lectures, as they do today; they did not try to present these most intimate human soul truths in the same way. Those who had insight into such truths expressed them in figurative form, through parables. It was an old custom, a custom that still originated in the Middle Ages, that one cannot arrive at the highest insights in an abstract form, but that for this a kind of initiation is needed. And this initiation made it impossible for those who sensed that a certain mood, a kind of breath of the soul, was needed to grasp such truths, to speak of these higher truths; truths that indeed cannot be perceived with the mind alone. A certain mood is needed, and I call this mood the 'breath of the soul'. The language of reason seemed to them personally too sober, too dry to express the highest truths. Furthermore, they still had some conviction that the one who experiences such things must first make himself worthy of the truth.

This conviction has meant that in ancient times, until about the third century of the Christian era, the truth about the human soul and the human spirit was not presented in such a way that it could be revealed publicly. Instead, those who were to come into possession of the highest truths had to be prepared to receive what was offered in the so-called mystery centers. These mystery temples presented all the secrets of natural and cyclic laws to the mystics as something that we would recognize as sober truth if we expressed it in dry sentences of the mind, but which the disciple had to recognize and live as living truth. It is not a matter of thinking wisdom, but of living wisdom. It is not merely a matter of permeating wisdom with the ardor of the spirit, but of becoming a completely different person. He had to approach the holiest with a certain awe; he had to understand that truth is divine, that it is imbued with the divine blood of the world, that it enters into our personality, that the divine world should revive, that knowledge means the same as what is meant by the word development. This was to be made clear to the mystic, and this he was to achieve at the purification stage of the mysteries. He was to educate himself to have a holy awe for the truth, he was to be weaned away from clinging to the sensual, from the sufferings and joys of life, from that with which everyday life surrounds us. The light of the spirit, which we need when we withdraw from profane life, could only be received when that had been discarded. When we are worthy to receive the light of the spirit, then we have become different, then we love the spirit, then we love with earnest sympathy and devotion that which we otherwise only recognized as a shadowy existence, as an abstract existence: We love the spiritual life, which for the ordinary person is only thought. But the mystic learns to sacrifice the self that clings to the everyday; he learns not only to penetrate truth through thinking, he learns to live it through, he learns to receive it as divine wisdom, as theosophy. Goethe expressed this conviction in the “West-Eastern Divan”:

And so long as you do not have this,
this: Die and become!
If you are just a gloomy guest
on the dark earth.

That was what the mystics of all times strove for: to let the lower die and to let that rise that lives in the spirit. To hold the dying of the sensual reality in low esteem, so that man may ascend into the realm of divine intentions. Dying in order to become. He who does not have this does not know what forces are at work in our world; he is only a dull guest on our earth. Goethe expressed this in the “West-Eastern Divan” and he also seeks to depict this vividly in the fairy tale of the green snake and the beautiful lily. The transformation of man from one level of existence to a higher level was the puzzle he wanted to solve. The question was: how can a person who lives in the everyday, who can only see with his eyes and hear with his ears, grasp this “die and become”? This was the question of mystics of all times. This great question was called the “spiritual alchemy” at all times, the transformation of man from the everyday soul to the spiritual soul, which grasps spiritual things as the ordinary person grasps earthly things, the table, the chair and so on, and considers them real. When this alchemy had taken place with man, then the mystery guides considered him worthy to receive the highest truths. Then they led him into the holy of holies, then he was initiated, then he was endowed with the teachings that teach him about the intentions of nature, about the intentions that permeate the plan of the world. It is such an initiation that Goethe describes [in “Fairytale”]: an initiation of the worthy person into the mysteries.

This arises for two reasons: first, in his youth, Goethe was equally eager to learn the secret that was then called the secret of alchemy. Between his studies in Strasbourg and Leipzig, he already recognized that there is a spiritual side to alchemy, and he knew that ordinary alchemy is only a distortion of the spiritual one. That everything known as alchemy could only exist because the figurative expressions were taken for realities. He meant the alchemy of the human being, which takes place with the forces of inner life. The mystery guides also gave instructions on how this alchemy can be achieved. Since they could only describe this transformation of human inner forces in parables and images, they spoke of one substance transforming into another. In what they said about the transformation of substances, they expressed what develops to a higher level in the life of the human soul, what transforms in a spiritual way. What great minds have shown in the spiritual realm to people attached to everyday life, they have applied to the transmutation of substances, of ordinary substances and metals in retorts, and have endeavored to discover what mysterious means was meant to effect the transmutation of the substance. Goethe has shown in one passage of Faust what he understood of these things. In the first part of Faust, during the walk outside the city gates, he points out exactly what is wrong, what is false and petty in the too materialistic view of alchemy. He mocks those who strive for the discovery of the secret in capricious efforts, and in the company of adepts and according to endless recipes, pour together the adverse:

There was a red lion, a bold suitor,
Married to a lily in the lukewarm bath,
And then both tormented with open flames
From one bridal chamber into another.

What Goethe ridicules here, the marriage with the lily, was what he wanted to show in the fairy tale of the green snake and the beautiful lily. The highest that man can aspire to, the highest that man should transform into, is what Goethe describes with the symbol of the lily. It is synonymous with what we call the highest wisdom, so that a person's actions see through nature, how an evolution has become an eternity. When man also observes the eternal laws, according to which we must perfect the eternal laws of existence, when he also recognizes the eternal development of his freedom, then he finds himself on a level of development, then this represents such a state of mind, such a level of knowledge, which is designated by the symbol of the lily. This lily, the highest of the soul's powers, the highest state of consciousness, where man may be free because he cannot abuse his freedom, because he can never disturb the cycles of freedom, this content of the soul, which was imparted to the mystics in the mysteries by transforming them through purification, this content has always been symbolically designated as the lily. The lily is also used to describe what Spinoza, in his “Ethics”, where he otherwise appears sober and mathematical, expresses enthusiastically and almost poetically at the end, when he says that man has ascended to the higher spheres of existence, that he imbues himself with the laws of nature. Spinoza calls this the realm of divine love in the human soul; the realm where man is no longer forced into anything, but where everything that lies within the realm of human development is done out of freedom and devotion, out of full love; where every compulsion, every arbitrariness is transformed by spiritual alchemy, where all action flows into the realm of freedom. Goethe described this love as the highest form of freedom, as freedom from all the desires and longings of everyday life. He said:

In our pure hearts there surges a striving
to voluntarily give ourselves to a higher, purer, unknown
out of gratitude,
to unravel the eternal unnamed
We call it: being pious! — Such blessed heights
I feel I am part of when I stand before her.

Before her gaze, as before the sun's reign
Before her breath, as before spring breezes
Melts, as long as the icy, rigid hold
The self-will deep in wintery tombs
No self-interest, no self-will lasts
Before her coming, they have shivered away.

This Spinozian love of God, which he seeks to attain by spiritual alchemy, is what the human being, the human will, is to unite with. The human will, which is active at every level, is that which has been referred to at all times as the “lion”, the creature in which this will is most highly strained, in which this will comes to life most strongly, and so mysticism refers to the human will as the lion.

In the Persian mysteries there were seven initiations. They are as follows: First one became a raven, then a secret agent, then a warrior, then a lion. The fifth degree was the one where man already looked at life from the other side, where man was born into the actual human being. Therefore, the Persian calls the one who has overcome the point of view of the lion a “Persian”. The Persian was an initiate of the fifth degree, and the one who had brought it to the point that his actions flow as calmly as the sun completes its course in the vault of heaven, the Persian called a “sunrunner”. And the one who performs the actions out of infinite love, he calls “belonging to the degree of the fathers”. The fourth degree was where man stood at the crossroads, where man has organized himself through the physical body, the etheric double body, which is the carrier of the life force, and the astral body, which is subject to the laws of desire, of passion. According to theosophical terminology, these three bodies form the lower parts of the human being; the lower man is born out of them. The initiate, the one who has seen through this connection, is designated by the Persian as the “lion”. And here the human being stands at a crossroads. Here that which forces him to act out of nature is transformed into a free gift of love. When he ascends to the fifth degree of initiation, when he develops to become the free human being who dares to do out of free love what he was otherwise compelled to do. This connection of the lion with the free loving entity is what alchemy describes as the mystery of human development. Goethe portrays this mystery in his Fairy Tale. He begins by showing how this strong-willed man stands, how he is drawn into the physical world from higher spheres, from spheres he does not know himself. Goethe is aware that man, in his spiritual nature, comes from higher spheres, that he is led into this world, which Goethe presents as the world of material, sensual existence. This world is the land on one bank of the river. In the “Fairytale”, however, there are two lands, this side of the river and the other side of it. From the beyond, the unknown ferryman takes people across to the land of the sensual world; and between the land of the spiritual and the sensual world there is the river, the water, which separates the two lands. With the water, Goethe has symbolized the same thing that mystics of all times have symbolized. Already in Genesis, this expression means the same as in Goethe. We also find this expression in the New Testament. For example, in the conversation that Jesus had with Nicodemus. It says: “He who is not born again of water and the Spirit cannot enter the kingdom of heaven.” Goethe understood the expression “born again of water” very well, and we can see how he understood it from the “Song of the Spirits above the Waters”:

The soul of man,
How like the water you are,
The fate of man,
How like the wind you are.

He places the world of the soul, the world of desire and longing, the world of passions and cravings, between our mind and our senses. These know neither good nor evil, our senses cannot err. The one who engages in these distinctions knows that when we study the laws of nature, we cannot speak of good and evil. When we study nature in the animal kingdom, we find that we can speak of harmful and beneficial animals, but not of good and evil. It is only by man's immersion in the water, in the world of the soul, that he becomes capable of good and evil. This world, which lies between the spiritual and the sensual, is the river over which the spirit comes from unknown spheres. Across the river has come man's innermost being, his actual spiritual core, across the river of passions and desires. And if he does not undergo further development, he is like a will-o'-the-wisp. This person, who is subject to the laws that live within him, when he has come across the river but has not yet received the divine spark to take him across to the other world, is therefore set down by the ferryman who brings people across from the opposite bank of the river to this side. No one can be brought over by the ferryman, but everyone can be brought over. We feel brought over without our intervention, through the forces that lie below our consciousness, that precede our actions. Through such forces we feel placed in the world of the senses, in this world. The ferryman who has brought us across from the spiritual life beyond has placed us in this world and can no longer take us back to the land we must reach, the land of the beautiful lily. (The ferryman is therefore the power through which one unconsciously enters the world of the senses.)

The will-o'-the-wisps want to pay the ferryman the tribute due with gold. But he demands fruits of the earth, which they do not have; they only have gold. But he does not want to be paid in gold. Pieces of gold, he says, are harmful to the river. The river cannot tolerate such gold, that is, wisdom can only be paid for with fruits of the earth. This is a profound wisdom. The gold represents the power of wisdom that lives in man. This power of wisdom that lives in man is his guide through life. This power of wisdom asserts itself when man feels transported into sensuality, as the power of his knowledge, his intellect. But this wisdom is not what brings man to development; it is precisely what makes him selfish, egotistical, when it unites with human nature. If it were to merge with that which flows in the stream, this power of understanding, this knowledge, then passion would throw up tremendous waves; for wherever man does not put his wisdom at the service of selflessness and simply throws it in, indulges his passions, there the stream throws up wild waves. It is impossible to satisfy the stream with gold, with wisdom. So he rejects wisdom that has not yet passed through selflessness. He rejects it into the ravines, where the deep darkness of the earth, where the deep crevices are. There he buries it. We will hear in a moment why he buries it. So the ferryman demands three cabbages, three artichokes, three onions; he demands fruits of the earth.

How can a person achieve their development? By ennobling the lower drives of their nature, by purifying what lives in them as sensual nature, by casting that into the stream and thus nourishing the stream of passions. This is what Schiller so beautifully expressed in his Aesthetic Letters: Only the one who has emancipated his lower nature understands how to be free. When our outer nature, our sensual nature, has been so ennobled, has grown from below, that it itself strives for the good, the beautiful, because passion can no longer lead it astray, because our outer sensual nature can no longer seduce us ; when we no longer throw wisdom into it, but pay for our passions with the fruits of the earth, so that our sensuality itself is absorbed by them, as the fruits of the earth are to be absorbed by the stream, then we have reached the lowest degree of initiation. This is expressed in the words of the ferryman:

You must know that I can only be paid with the fruits of the earth.

Now the will-o'-the-wisps continue in this world, that is, the human being seeks to continue on his path in life. In this world he finds the green snake, the symbol of human striving, of human knowledge. This snake has had a strange experience. The ferryman has previously driven the gold pieces down the stream and hidden them in the crevices of the earth. The snake has found them. The wisdom that helps people to move forward is still a hidden treasure today, shrouded in mystery. That is what Goethe wanted to say. Therefore, the person who wanted to find wisdom had to seek it far from all human selfishness. Then, when the person has made himself worthy of receiving it, it is in the right place. The symbol of the human striving for knowledge, the snake, penetrates itself with gold. This itself penetrates itself completely with wisdom and now becomes luminous. Thus the snake desires from the will-o'-the-wisps that which gives selfish man cause for pride, that with which he then throws around and shows off. This human knowledge, which is destructive in the service of egoism, is attained when man, like the snake, crawls humbly on the ground and strives to recognize reality bit by bit. It cannot be received when man stands proudly and erectly, but only when he, horizontal like the snake, clings to the ground in humility. There is the gold of wisdom in place, there man can imbue himself with wisdom. That is why the will-o'-the-wisp also call the snake their relative, saying:

Of course we are only related on the part of appearance.

– and yes, they are related, related is the snake to the will-o'-the-wisp, related is the wisdom that puts itself at the service of selfishness, to the wisdom that makes itself available in humility.

Now we are told in the “Fairytale” that the snake was down in the crevices of the earth and that it found something of human form there. The snake was in a temple. This is nothing other than the symbol of the mystery temple of all times. This hidden temple, which was in the crevices under the earth, is the symbol of the place of initiation. Here in this temple, the snake has seen the three great priests of initiation, those priests who are endowed with the three highest powers of human nature. Theosophy calls them Atma, Budhi, Manas. Goethe calls what Theosophy calls Atma, Budhi, Manas, the King of Wisdom, the King of Beauty and the King of Strength or the King of Will. In the mystery centers, the spirit was united with these three fundamental powers of the soul, with which the human soul must be initiated. In the Fairy Tale, Goethe describes this process. Down here in the halls of the earth is the snake that will shine from within because it has absorbed the gold of wisdom. And because it has absorbed it in humility, it is illuminated from within. The old man with the lamp is another figure. What does he represent to us? The old man's lamp has the property that it only glows when other light is already present. Because the snake glows, illuminates the interior of the mystery temple with the light radiating from itself, the light of the old man can also shine here. Goethe expresses this thought elsewhere with the words:

If the eye were not solar,
How could we behold the light?
If not the God-own power lives in us,
How can we be enraptured by the divine?

Here he says in poetic words what he expresses in pictures in the “Fairytale”. The realization that we call occult realization in Theosophy is represented by the old man with the lamp. The light appears to no one who has not truly prepared himself to receive it. It does not appear to anyone who has not worked their way up to that higher level of development, so that their self, their selfless nature, shines from within, bringing light to the light. When these two lights, the intuitive light and the light that comes from within the personality, shine towards each other, they give what the person experiences in his transformation as spiritual alchemy. The room around him becomes light, and he learns to recognize what the highest spiritual powers are, the gifts of the three kings: wisdom, beauty and strength. The gift of the golden king is wisdom, the gift of the silver king is beauty, devotion, and the gift of the brazen king is strength, willpower. A person can only understand themselves according to their innermost strengths when the light is reciprocated, the light of the lamp, which can only shine where light is already present. Then the three kings appear in their splendor, and at the same time the meaning of the fourth king becomes clear, that king who is composed of the metals of the other three kings. He is a symbol of the lower nature, in which the noble forces of wisdom, beauty and strength interact in a disorderly and disharmonious way, as in chaos. These three powers, which live in the highly developed soul, are also present in the lower nature, but in a chaotic, disharmonious way. This fourth king is the realm of the present world, the chaotic mixture of wisdom, beauty and strength. The soul powers, which can only achieve the highest in harmonious interaction, act on each other in a chaotic way in the present age. The voice sounds in the temple of initiation:

He will sit down.

The chaotic mixing will have disappeared when that which Goethe so longed for has been brought about: that the temple will no longer be hidden, but will rise in full daylight; that the temple will have risen from the depths and can serve all people as a temple of initiation; that a bridge will be available for all people to cross back and forth. That is the time when all people will have made themselves worthy of the highest wisdom, the highest devotion and the highest will. Then he will have fulfilled this task: the temple will have risen above the flow of passions. These passionate forces will then be so pure and noble that the highest spiritual element will be able to arise in the temple in broad daylight from the stream of desires and passions. Therefore it is necessary that humanity be filled with the “die and become” that Goethe so clearly portrayed in the “West-Eastern Divan”.

Goethe was repeatedly asked what the solution to the riddle was. He said: “What the solution to the riddle is can be found in the ‘fairy tale’ itself, but not in one word. It can be found at the point where we hear in a conversation in the underground temple that the snake is saying something in the old man's ear that we do not hear, by which Goethe suggests it as a confidential secret. This unspoken element is the solution. The solution does not lie in something that can be expressed in words, but in an inner resolve. Goethe also hinted at this in the “Fairy Tale” itself. The snake said quite matter-of-factly: “I want to sacrifice myself, I want to purify my self through selflessness.” This is precisely what must be considered the deepest solution to the fairy tale. It is an act, not a teaching. Until now, there were only two ways to cross the river: either at midday, when the green snake lies across the river and forms a bridge, so that one could cross the river at midday, or at a moment when the sun is at midday for him, when he is ripe to surrender himself to the higher spiritual light. But time and again he is drawn back down from this midday moment of life into the lower world, riven by passions. In such midday moments, the elect of the spirit can cross over from the shore of sensual life to the shore of the spirit.

But there is yet another way to cross the river, namely in the evening, when the shadow of the great giant extends over the river. The shadow of the great giant can also form a bridge over the river, but only at dusk. This shadow of the great giant, what is it? Goethe spoke in greater detail and more profoundly with his trusted friend about the forces that he had symbolically hinted at in the fairy tale. When Schiller once wanted to make a trip to Frankfurt am Main and was in danger of being mixed up in the quarrels of the time, Goethe wrote to Schiller: “I am very glad that you did not come here to the West, because the shadow of the giant could have touched you roughly.” But the meaning of the giant is also clearly expressed in the fairy tale itself. The giant, being weak, is incapable of anything. Only his shadow can build the bridge to the other side. This giant is the raw [mechanical] force of nature. Its shadow is capable of leading the person of raw passions across the river where the light no longer shines so brightly, where the light no longer deceives. These are the people who, by extinguishing their clear consciousness of the day in the various states of the soul, in trance, in somnambulism, in the state of psychic vision and so on, seek to cross over into the land of the spirit. So too, in the wild and raging action through which the people of that time wanted to penetrate into the realm of freedom, their consciousness of the day was extinguished. They wanted to reach the land of the beautiful lily. But the shadow of the giant can only cross over. Only uncertainly, in the twilight of consciousness, can man overcome the passions, that is, deaden them, when he is in an almost unconscious state, when he is not living in bright day-consciousness.

These are the two paths that lead to the other shore: in solemn moments at midday, the snake; and in the twilight of consciousness, in a trance, and so on, the shadow of the giant. But one thing should be striven for here: the snake should sacrifice itself completely, it should not just bend over the river of passions at noon, it should lead from one bank to the other as a bridge at every hour of the day, so that not only some are able to cross over, but that all people can come and go with ease. This is the decision the snake has made, this is the decision Goethe has made. Goethe points to an age of selflessness, where man does not put his strength at the service of the lower self, but at the service of selflessness, desiring no personal benefit.

No self-interest, no self-will lasts,
Before their coming they have shrunk away.

There are a number of other ideas associated with this basic theme of the “Fairytale”. I cannot go into all of them today, but I would like to touch on a few.

We find the old man's wife with the lamp, who is married to the representative of human — occult — knowledge. She tends the old man's house. The will-o'-the-wisps have come to her. These will have licked down all the gold that was on the wall, and they have given up the gold, which they have enriched themselves with, so that the live pug that ate the gold had to suffer death. The old woman is the power of understanding, which brings forth what is useful. Only when the occult power marries what clings to material culture, when the highest marries the lowest in the world, only then can the world take its course of development. Man will not be led away from everyday life, but he will purify everyday culture.

Man is surrounded in the world, in his dwelling, by that which hangs on the walls as gold. All that surrounds him is also gold. So what surrounds him? On the one hand, it is the man of knowledge, on the other, the man of utility. The entire experience of the human race surrounds him. All that has been gathered as the experience of mankind is piled up in human science. Those who strive for it seek what is recorded in the scriptures. There they lick out, as it were, historical wisdom. This is what surrounds man in his striving; it is what man will imbue himself with completely. But it is useless for that which is to live. The living pug gobbles up the gold and dies from it. Wisdom, which only exists as dead bookish wisdom, not made alive by the spirit, kills everything that is alive. Only when it is reunited with the source of wisdom, with the beautiful lily, does it come to life again. Therefore, the old man gives his wife the dead pug to take to the beautiful lily. The lamp has a peculiar property: [dead animals are transformed into gems by it], everything dead is brought to life by it; what is alive is clarified by it to become crystal, bright and transparent. This transformation is brought about in man through knowledge, that is, through occult knowledge.

Furthermore, the old woman is stopped by the will-o'-the-wisps to pay her debts to the ferryman. These three fruits are representatives of human utility, representatives of material culture. Material culture is supposed to pay this tribute to passion. Where else could the actual driving forces of the lower nature come from, if not from technology and the cultivation of material culture? It is interesting that the shadow of the giant, who has just emerged from the river, takes some of the fruits of the earth away, so that the old woman has only two of each fruit instead of three. However, she should have three for the ferryman and must therefore give the river a pledge. At this point, something very significant happens: She has to dip her hand into the river, which makes it black so that it is almost no longer visible; it is still there, but almost invisible. This shows us the connection between external culture and the world of the river, the world of the passions. Material culture must be placed at the service of the astral, the soul. As long as human nature has not been refined enough to be offered as a tribute to the stream of passions, technology is indebted to human flow. Invisible human endeavor is invisible when it is in the service of human passions; invisibly, man works on something that cannot be seen in his ultimate goal. It is invisible, but present; tangible, but not outwardly visible. Everything that man achieves on the way to the great goal, until he has paid his debt to the flow of the soul, everything that he has to throw into the world of passions, takes on the appearance of the invisible hand of the old woman with the lamp. As long as the sensual nature is not completely purified, as long as it is not consumed by the fire of passion, it does not shine, it is invisible. That is what upsets the old woman so much: she no longer gives off any light. This could be expanded upon in more detail. Every word is significant, but it would take us too far afield today.

So let us hasten to the great train, where a youth meets us who has tried too early to embrace the beautiful lily and is thus paralyzed in all his vital strength. Goethe says elsewhere: He who strives for freedom without having already made his inner self free falls even more into the snare of necessity. He who has not freed himself will be killed. Only he who is prepared, purified, as in the mysteries, who has undergone purification in the temple of the mysteries so that he can marry the lily in a dignified manner, will not be killed. He who has died to the lower in order to be reborn in the higher sense can embrace the lily. The present is presented to us through the paralyzed youth who wanted to achieve the highest in a storm. Now he complained to everyone he met that he could not embrace the lily. Now he is to be made ripe, for which purpose all the powers of man must unite, which are symbolized in the participants in the procession. The procession consists of the old man with the lamp, the will-o'-the-wisps and the lily itself. All the beautiful individual powers are thus embraced in this procession, which is led down into the clefts of the earth to the temple of initiation. Yes, it is also a deep feature of the riddle-tale that he lets the will-o'-the-wisps unlock the gate of the temple. Selfish wisdom is not useless; it is a necessary transitional stage. Human selfishness can be overcome by feeding itself on wisdom, by permeating itself with the gold of genuine knowledge. Then this wisdom can serve to unlock this temple. Those who unconsciously serve wisdom in the outer self are led to the actual seats of wisdom. The scholars who only pore over books are the guides there. Goethe did not underestimate science; he knew that it is science that unlocks the temple of wisdom; he knew that one must test this, judge and absorb everything in pure knowledge, and that without this one cannot penetrate into the temples of the highest wisdom. Goethe sought this wisdom everywhere. He considered himself worthy of recognizing the highest in spiritual life in art, after he had passed through science. He sought knowledge in physics, in biology, everywhere. And so he also lets those enter the temple of initiation who are will-o'-the-wisps, who, relying on themselves in a false upright position, confront the one who, after all, has observed through experience and can creep in like a snake. They cause the temple to open up, and the procession now enters the temple.

Now something happens that Goethe longed for all of humanity: The entire temple moves up out of the crevices of the earth. The temple can only be built over the river of the soul, over the river of passions and desires, because the snake has disintegrated into precious stones, which form the pillars for a bridge. And now people can move freely from the sensual world into the spiritual world and from the spiritual world into the sensual world. The marriage of the sensual man with the spiritual is achieved through the selfless man, through the sacrifice of the serpent's self, which arches over the river as a bridge. The temple thus rises out of the crevices of the earth and is accessible to all who cross the bridge, accessible to those with everyday vehicles as well as to pedestrians.

In the temple itself, we see the three kings again. The young man, who has been purified because he has recognized the three soul powers, is endowed with these three soul powers. The golden king approaches him and says:

Recognize the highest;

The silver king approaches him and says:

Feed the sheep.

In this way, Goethe expressed a thought that lay deep in his soul, namely the union of beauty with piety. It is the [invitation] that is in the Bible. He addresses these words to the young man in the sense that he expressed when he saw the Greek deities depicted in Rome and said:

There is necessity, there is God

, and:

I suspect that they [the great artists of the Greeks] proceeded according to the very laws by which nature proceeds and which I am on the trail of.

It is a personal touch of Goethe's when he lets the silver king appear as beauty and piety. And then the king of strength approaches him and says:

The sword on the left, the right free.

The sword should not be used for attack but for protection. Harmony should be brought about, not conflict. After this process, the young man is initiated with the three soul powers. But the fourth king has nothing more to say; he collapses into himself. The temple has risen from obscurity into the bright light of day. In the temple, a small silver temple rises up, which is none other than the transformed hut of the ferryman. It is a significant feature that Goethe allows the hut of the ferryman, who is the one who brings us across from the land of the spirit, to transform into pure, beaten silver, so that it itself has become a small altar, a small temple, a holy of holies. This hut, which represents what is most sacred in man, his deepest core of being, which he has preserved as a memory of the land from which he comes, from which he has come and to which the ferryman cannot take him back. It [the hut] represents what came before our development; it is the memory that we descend from the spirit. This memory stands as the holy of holies in the temple, in its sanctuary.

The giant, that raw natural force that lives in nature, a spirit that could not work through itself, but only as a shadow, has been given a remarkable mission. This giant stands upright and only indicates the hour. When man has discarded everything that belongs to his lower nature, when he has become completely spiritualized, then the raw, lower natural force will no longer appear in its original elementary power as a storm of the natural force living around man. This mechanical, raw natural force will only perform mechanical services. Man will always need these mechanical natural forces, but they will no longer conquer him, but he will instruct them in their service. His work will be the hour hand of spiritual culture, which, like a clock, regularly indicates mechanical necessity. But the giant itself will no longer be necessary.

We must not approach the interpretation of the fairy tale by discussing every single word pedantically, but rather we must empathize with what Goethe wanted to say and expressed in his images. In his “Fairy Tale”, Goethe addresses what Schiller expressed in his “Aesthetic Letters”: the marriage of necessity with freedom. What Schiller was able to express in his letters, Goethe was unable to express in abstract thoughts, but in fairy tale form. If I want to express these thoughts in all their vibrancy, then I need images; images like those used by the ancient priests of initiation in the mysteries. The priests of initiation did not teach by instructing their students with abstract actions, but by presenting the sacred Dionysus drama to them, showing them the great process of human development and the resurrecting Dionysus, as well as showing what was invisibly taking place in the Dionysus drama or the Osiris drama. In this way, Goethe also wanted to express what lived in him, in his drama in images. So, we do not want to interpret Goethe's fairy tale as usual, but we want to understand it as Theosophy explains this process, namely the marriage of the lower nature of man with the higher, as the marriage of the physical and ethereal body, the life force and the passions and desires with the higher nature of man, the three pure spiritual soul forces, namely Atma, Budhi, Manas, which are represented as the three kings. etheric body, of the life-force and of the passions and desires with the higher nature of the human being, the three pure spiritual soul forces, namely Atma, Budhi, Manas, which are represented as the three kings.

This is the development of the human being that extends into the age when every human being will be able to be an initiate. Goethe tried to express this in a truly theosophical way. Just as those mystery priests expressed their wisdom in images, so too did Goethe in his apocalypse, in images, express what human development represents, which will one day be the greatest deed of humankind: the transformation of the lower nature of man into the higher, the transformation of the lower metals, the lower powers of the soul, into the gold of wisdom; the transformation of that which lives in isolation into the pure, noble metal of wisdom, represented by the king, who is embodied in gold. Goethe wanted to express this human alchemy, this spiritual transformation, in a somewhat different way than in his “Faust”. He wanted to express in a slightly different form what he had secretly included in the second part of “Faust”. Goethe was a true theosophist. He had grasped what it means that everything that is transitory, that lives in our senses, is only a parable. But he also realized that what man tries and strives for is impossible to describe, but that it is achieved through an act; that what is inadequate is what keeps us on this side of the river, that it must become an event if the meaning of human development is to be fulfilled. That is why he also expressed this secret in the “Chorus mysticus” and concluded the second part of “Faust” with it. This is the highest life-power of the human being, symbolized in the beautiful lily, with which the male principle, the power of will, unites. He expresses this in the beautiful closing words of the second part of his Faust. These verses are his mystical creed, and they are only fully understood when one has seen his more intimate life unfold in the fairy tale of the Green Snake and the Beautiful Lily. He had already begun working on the second part of Faust at the turn of the 18th century, at the time when his view of nature was transformed to become a view of a higher world. It has the deepest significance if we can understand the words of Goethe in his testament, in the second part of Faust. When he had completed his earthly career and died, this second part was found sealed in his desk. He bequeathed this book to the world as a testament. And this testament concludes with his mystical confession:

All that is
transient is but a simile
The inadequate
Here it becomes an event
The indescribable
Here it is done;
The eternal feminine
Draws us on.